


District K

by shisabella



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunger Games Setting, Angst, F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-12
Updated: 2020-10-12
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:35:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 34,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26325004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shisabella/pseuds/shisabella
Summary: When fourteen-year-old Misty Waterflower is reaped for the Hunger Games she knows that she can't afford to worry about anyone but herself if she wants to survive. Thankfully the male tribute who's picked alongside her is someone she doesn't know and doesn't care for - or so she thinks. Hunger Games AU.
Relationships: Kasumi | Misty/Satoshi | Ash Ketchum
Kudos: 21





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> This is an old work. It was originally written about eight years ago, and in Italian, my first language. Recently I stumbled into it while sorting through my files, reread it and for some reason got extremely into the concept all over again, and drew some art for it. I'm mostly only translating it and dumping it here so I can share it with my English-speaking friends.
> 
> Being such an old work, I'm frankly not exceptionally interested in receiving feedback or concrit - there's a lot about it that I would change if I were to write it from scratch today, in terms of plot, characterization and writing style, but I decided to preserve it as it was and translate it as faithfully as possible, only changing some phrasing and a few lines of dialogue here and there that didn't work as well in English as they did in Italian. I don't consider it representative of my current writing abilities.
> 
> Originally it was written as an unreasonably long oneshot, but I'm splitting it in five chapters for easier reading (and translating). The length will vary, as it wasn't written with this format in mind.
> 
> A couple extra notes about the worldbuilding:  
> \- I envisioned each district as based on a Pokémon region (from Kanto to Unova because Kalos, Alola and Galar didn't exist at the time, with some regions from the spinoff games thrown in for numbers), that's why they're identified with letters instead of number. District K = Kanto, obviously. From what I recall my reasoning was that they once had their original names, but were stripped of them and reduced to their initials after the events that led to the creation of the Panem equivalent. They're not in alphabetical order because I wanted K to be the last, so I justified it with being ordered geographically based on distance from the Capitol. None of this really matters in the story, honestly, I'm just offering an explanation for this nonsensical alphabet soup past me went with.  
> \- Giovanni is in President Snow's role, hence the Capitol's symbol being a red R and the Peacekeepers having the appearance of Team Rocket grunts.  
> \- A bunch of liberties were taken with the setting; some things don't function the way they would in the Hunger Games franchise. The poisonous berries mentioned later on aren't nightlock, for one.
> 
> The major character death warning means MAJOR character death. As in past me was an ass and the ending is not a happy one.

Jessebelle waves her fan around one last time before snapping it closed and curving her red lips in a smirk. The color matches her curls, of a bright shade that can't possibly be natural and so perfect they look made of rubber, without a single hair out of place. “Ladies first!” she announces, before walking up to the glass bowl that contains the names of the girls.

Misty watches her walk across the stage and like the two previous years she presses her lips together until they go numb and holds her breath hoping it won't be her. _Not me_ , she prays; _not me, not me,_ while Jessebelle sticks her hand in the bowl and rummages theatrically through the paper strips. Her nails are red as well, the exact same red as her lipstick and her hair. She pulls one of the strips out and Misty feels her stomach clamp shut. Maybe she'll be lucky, she tells herself, like her sisters. Lily, the youngest, turned nineteen barely a month ago and none of them was ever called. She's the last one left now and still five years short of nineteen. But maybe she'll be lucky. Maybe she won't ever be called either. After all her name is just one little paper strip among a thousand paper strips, just a minuscule chance.

Jessebelle walks back to the platform and smooths the strip between her fingers in a silence so thick Misty thinks she can hear the crackle of the crumpled paper. Then reads the name, her voice bright and clear:

“Misty Waterflower!”

Misty feels as though suddenly there's nothing but emptiness around her, like the ground under her feet suddenly collapsed into a pit and she was somehow left suspended mid-air. She feels nothing. A rumble fills her ears like she's underwater.

She swallows. Around her the crowd parts, isolating her. She's no longer one among a thousand, she's the tribute of District K. For a moment she clenches her hands on the horrible blue dress Daisy made her wear, pressing the rough pattern of the fabric into her palms, then starts walking towards the stage.

 _May the odds be ever in your favor,_ echoes in her head in Jessebelle's voice, while around her the other girls and boys that were not chosen step aside to let her through.

She climbs the steps and Jessebelle greets her with a smile. “Wonderful!” she comments. “Here is our first tribute! Any volunteers?”

Misty looks at the crowd in front of the stage and knows that no one will step up. It never happens, no one wants to take the place of a walking corpse.

Her head spins. For a second she thinks her knees will buckle and she'll fall face first from the stage, and takes half a step back because she's afraid it will happen for real. Then Jessebelle breaks the silence. “Well, let's move onto the boys, then,” she says, walking to the second bowl. She fishes out one of the strips and unrolls it between her red-nailed fingers.

“Ash Ketchum!” she reads, and Misty looks down again, looking for the face that name belongs to. At least it's not someone she knows. At least she won't have to choose between her life and the life of someone she cares for.

She's seen the tributes walking towards the stage every year, but never from here. The crowd draws back around a kid with black hair, ruffled as though he hasn't brushed it in a week, and she realizes that actually yes, she does know him, sort of. Maybe she's talked to him once or twice, at the marketplace; she made some deals with his mother. He's younger than her, she believes, maybe twelve or thirteen, and he reaches the stage with his hands balled into fists and his face white as a sheet. He won't stand a chance in the arena, Misty thinks, he's small enough even she could easily take him in a fight, and then hates herself for thinking that way, like she's already reasoning how they want her to. Maybe she forgot some pieces of her humanity down in the town square, among the crowd. Maybe it's what happens to every tribute.

Ash climbs on stage and Jessebelle asks if there are volunteers. He glances hopeful at the crowd, but again no one speaks.

The mayor starts reading the Treaty of Treason like every year and Misty doesn't listen. She looks towards the square and she can't believe she was there just minutes ago, one among many, invisible and identical to the others; then turns her eyes to look at Ash. He still has his fists clenched and she can see them shaking slightly. He's shorter than her, and thin; she could probably lift him from the ground without breaking a sweat. Suddenly she imagines him in the hands of some other district's tributes, taller and bigger and trained to compete in the games since they were young, and a wave of nausea closes her stomach even more.

 _Worry about yourself_ , she snaps, looking back ahead. She'll be in their hands too. If she wants to get back home she can't afford to feel sorry for anyone. She thinks this and suddenly realizes that yes, she really is reasoning the way they want her to. Maybe something really does change inside of you when your name is read aloud.

The mayor finishes talking and gestures for her and Ash to shake hands. He turns to look at her, hesitating a little. He's got brown eyes, a warm shade, and his fingers are cold and clasp hers nervously for a second before letting go.

Behind them the anthem starts playing. _May the odds be ever in your favor,_ Misty thinks again for no reason, and looks back down, toward the dozens of eyes watching them like two goldfishes in a bowl.

***

The Peacekeepers, all in black with the President's red R on their shirts, escort them through the door of the justice building. Briefly, before it closes behind them, Misty wonders what they would do to her if she tried to escape. Probably not kill her, because the tributes must be two and must make it alive to the arena to be killed on live TV, but she's sure they'd find other ways to make her wish she hadn't; they could use her sisters, for instance. And anyway they'd catch her right away. It's not worth trying.

When they leave her alone in a room she stands for a bit next to the closed door, waiting for the strange feeling of numbness that's been clinging to her since Jessebelle read her name to wear off and for her arms and legs to feel like they're attached to her body again. It still won't happen, at least not entirely, so she breathes slowly and takes a look around. She's never been in such a luxurious place before. The floor is covered in a thick dark green carpet and the furniture is all polished wood, with swirls carved on the legs and around the drawers; on the wall across from her gold-trimmed curtains shade a large window. Instinctively she reaches it and presses her hands to the glass, feeling like she's suffocating. There's no way to open it, it's just encased in the wall. She leans her forehead against it and waits for the coldness of the glass to ground her a little.

There's a couch next to the window and she sits, drawing her knees to her chest even if her shoes leave marks on the green velvet. _They can buy a new one_ , she thinks, pulling at the hem of her dress to cover her legs. A couch can be replaced. The lives of the tributes that sat on it can't.

She thinks about her chances in the arena while she waits for her sisters to come say goodbye to her. She's pretty fast, and she had to learn to use a bow and arrows, even if she wouldn't call herself good. A good chunk of the squirrels and rabbits she tried to hit always got away, and she doesn't know if she'll find a bow in the arena, anyway. She's never used any other weapons. She's a good swimmer, but that'll hardly be useful for anything. She's pretty good at throwing a punch, if she has to, but in the arena she'll probably be against tributes thrice as big as her. Ash pops into her mind again and again she feels sorry for him, and she digs her nails into the fabric of her skirt, pushing the thought away.

Daisy and the others are there a few minutes later. They're all crying, and Misty has to press her lips together tight not to do the same. Outside of the justice building she'll be greeted by cameras, she can't let herself be seen with puffy eyes and a red face; the other tributes would see her and know she's an easy target, a kid that can't even keep from crying.

“Oh honey, I was so hoping they wouldn't pick you either,” Daisy whispers, pulling her into a hug. Her hair tickles her. She's never called her honey before.

“I'll be alright,” Misty replies. They're the first words she's said since Jessebelle read her name and her voice sounds strange, hoarse, as if she forgot how to use it. She clears her throat and then swallows a lump of air, feeling tears push at the back of her eyes. “You'd better worry about how you're gonna manage without me.”

She's sure they'll be fine, in reality; all three of them inherited their mother's ability to recognize edible herbs and plants much more than she did, and Violet can bake bread that's almost as good as the baker's and sells well at the marketplace. She still tells them to be careful, to bargain for the right price and not waste food, and find some meat or fish or cheese when they can. None of them can use her bow, but many hunters would barter prey for a few loaves of bread. Daisy listens to her with tearful eyes and then hugs her again, burying her face in her hair.

“Be careful, sis',” she sobs. Lily and Violet join the hug and for a bit they stay that way, without talking. Misty's eyes sting and she bites her lips, fighting not to cry with all her might.

“I love you,” she whispers, as the Pacekeeper on watch by the door informs them that their time's up. Daisy holds her tighter for a second, then all three are escorted outside. Misty stands straight to see them until the door closes and suddenly it really hits her that she'll almost certainly never see them again. She'll die in the arena and they'll see it happen, live on the screen of their old TV.

The Peacekeepers come back soon after to take her back outside. She sees the cameras as soon as she steps out of the door and knows she did well trying not to cry. Looks like Ash managed to, too, but his eyes are wet like he's about to. While she watches him he sniffles and wipes his arm over his nose.

She has to sit next to him on the car that'll take them to the train station and she avoids looking at him again, keeping her eyes on the window. The bare streets of District K fly by at a speed that turns her stomach upside down: she's never been on a car before, and her body evidently doesn't appreciate it. Just as she's starting to think that she might throw up on the cream-colored seats the vehicle finally slows down and stops.

 _I'll never see anything again_ , she thinks, as she walks out and has to lean against the door because a bout of nausea makes her stagger. Her sisters, her home, the sea and the woods, even the marketplace.

“Are you okay?” someone asks. She turns, startled, and sees that it's Ash.

She nods. “Yeah,” she answers, lowering her eyes. Then adds, sharper, reminding herself that they aren't friends: “What do you care?”

He blinks, taken aback. “I was just asking.”

She ignores him and takes her hand off the door. It looks like her legs will hold her, after all, and she breathes in before looking around.

The train is massive and terrifying, out of place in the district's rickety station. Usually all that leaves from here are rusty freight trains, loud as all get out. This one is white and silver and looks like it should be quieter than the wind.

The cameras surround them one more time, then the train doors open, with a noise like a whisper.

***

Surge, their mentor, is a large man who talks about the Hunger Games like he's talking about a war. He won fourteen years ago, when he was seventeen. He was the last Victor their district ever had. He awaits them sitting in the train's dining car, in a camo shirt with the sleeves rolled up his muscular arms. He's already started eating, going straight for seconds.

“Manners!” Jessebelle scolds him, sitting down gracefully. There's two chairs left for her and Ash, next to each other. Misty sighs and then sits as well, smoothing out her shorts against her legs: she picked them from the clothes available in her personal quarters, and Jessebelle frowned upon seeing her, like she expected her to come back wearing a nice dress.

The table is laden with more food than Misty's ever seen at once in her whole life. It must be the same for Ash, because he looks at the plates and trays with his mouth agape like he can't believe that so much stuff could be in the same place at once. “Is this all for us?” he asks at last.

“Of course,” Jessebelle answers, surprised. “ _Bon appétit._ Leave some space for dessert.”

He starts filling his plate before she's even done talking. Misty thinks she won't be able to eat much at first, but it only takes her a few spoonfuls of a soup that feels like velvet in her mouth to give in: she's never eaten anything this good before, at home sometimes they had nothing for days, and she'll probably be dead in a week anyway, so why waste the chance? She tries some bread so soft it doesn't even look real next, and meat in thick slices that's nothing like the rabbits and squirrels she's used to, red in the middle and delicious. By the time the dessert comes she's a bit nauseous again, since her stomach isn't remotely used to being this full, but she can't not try that as well. Ash ate even more and he's a bit green in the face, too, but still empties his plate to the last crumb.

Surge, who in the meantime moved onto a beer mug overflowing with foam, lets out a bitter laugh. “Bet you'd never eaten like this before, huh? I can tell, you're both toothpicks. It sure won't hurt to put on a few pounds before you get to the arena.” He points at Ash with the mug. “Especially you.”

Misty pushes her plate aside. Half her slice of cake is still on it, but she really can't eat any more. “What do we have to do?” she asks. Surge studies her carefully.

“Survive, mostly,” he says. “What do you think you can do?”

She shrugs. “I can use a bow a little. I'm not too great, but not bad either.”

“Anything else?”

“I can swim.” She thinks for a moment. “I can throw a punch. I'm pretty good at recognizing edible plants.”

Surge waves a hand as if to say it's something they can work with, then turns to Ash. “What about you?”

Ash lowered his head over the plate. His hand tightens around the fork. “I dunno,” he says. He looks up for a moment, then down again. “I can run. I'm fast.”

“You don't win a war by running,” Surge comments. Ash stares at the plate a few seconds longer, then stands up abruptly.

“I'm going back to my room, I wanna get some sleep,” he says, then notices the curious glances on him and attempts a smile, raising a hand to rub the nape of his neck. “Sorry, I don't feel too good. I think I ate too much, I'd best lie down a while if I don't wanna throw up.”

“No problem,” Jessebelle assures him, only to ask, as soon as he walks away: “What's wrong with him?”

Misty shrugs again. She turns back to Surge. “What do I need to do to survive?”

“Everything you can,” he answers. “Everything you think necessary. You don't win a war with compassion or remorse either.”

“It's not a war,” Misty points out. Surge empties his beer in a gulp.

“Might as well be,” he replies, and she finds nothing to retort.

***

Jessebelle takes her to another car to watch the recap of the reapings. “It's a shame Ash didn't feel well, you should both have seen it,” she comments, airing herself with her embroidered fan. It's not the same as this morning, this one is red, to match her hair and her lips. This morning's was pink.

Misty sits in front of the TV in silence, and wraps her arms around herself even if the train car isn't cold. On the screen she sees the names being called one after the other. She tries to memorize all the tributes, but only some leave an impression: a young girl with brown skin and an incredible amount of hair, from District U; in District S a blue haired girl volunteers in place of another with red hair cropped short and spiky, while the male tribute walks on stage expressionless. The tributes of District H seem to know each other, the girl freezes and starts crying when the second name is called.

When the broadcast reaches their district she feels her stomach turn and feels again like she might throw up everything she ate at dinner. She watches Jessebelle walks to the glass bowl with the names and feels almost the same anxiety and terror she did in the crowd, as if things could go differently, as if another paper strip could be picked. She digs her nails into her arm when she hears her name again.

Seeing herself on the screen is strange, and she feels oddly detached watching herself walk slowly towards the stage and climb the steps, like somehow she's been pulled out of her body and placed back in the audience. _I wonder what impression I give,_ she thinks. Stood on the stage and paler than a ghost she doesn't look different from many of the others. The ones who know right away that they won't stand a chance. The ones who'll never go back home.

Jessebelle sighs miserably. “My hair got all messed up,” she comments, and Misty blinks and turns to look at her.

“Your _hair_?” she repeats, in disbelief, because not a single hair on Jessebelle's head looked out of place to her and because even if her entire head had caught fire on live television that'd have been the last of her worries. “Who cares about your hair.”

She frowns in outrage. “I was live in the whole nation! Do you know how many people were looking at me?”

For a moment Misty doesn't know what to retort. She blinks again while on the screen Ash walks on stage, at least as pale as her, then looks furious back at the woman.

“In, what, a week?, both I and Ash will almost definitely be dead, and so will be nearly all the other kids we just saw, and you're worried about your _hair_? What's wrong with you, who the hell cares about your hair!”

She's basically yelling. She doesn't wait for Jessebelle to come up with a retort, she stands and storms out of the car. She doesn't slow down until she's back in front of their quarters. There she stops, letting out a frustrated exhale of breath, and loosens her fists she'd clenched to tight her nails dug red marks into her palms. Outside of the window she sees glimpses of the lights of some district. H, maybe, or maybe S, she couldn't say.

“Her hair,” she repeats to herself, struggling to grapple with it. She shakes her head. The door to Ash's quarters is closed. Briefly she considers knocking and asking what's wrong, because she's quite sure that a stomachache wasn't at all the reason he left that suddenly; then stops. In a few days they'll be one against the other in the arena. She can't let herself care. Yet she hesitates a moment longer, her hand halfway lifted towards his door.

She bites her lip, then turns and walks back into her room. She strips of her clothes and gets into the shower, and stands for a bit with her eyes closed, her face turned towards the stream. They don't have a shower at home, nor hot water. If she won they could have them; maybe even a whole bathroom like that, with marble around the sink and shiny metal shelves full of soaps and essences of all kinds. Daisy would love it, she's sure.

 _You won't win,_ she reminds herself, as she rubs her hair with the towel. _You'll never go back home, you'll never see Daisy and the others again. You'll be dead in a week or so._

She stares at her reflection in the mirror as if expecting a reply, but her reflection has nothing to say. It won't even start crying when she tries to force it to, even if she could do it now. Her tears would have time to dry before tomorrow morning. But they won't come out, not even one.

She leaves her hair down to finish drying and tosses a t-shirt on to slip into bed. She doesn't expect to fall asleep easily, and in fact she can't, and for the good part of the night stares at the ceiling listening to the barely perceptible buzz of the train's engine. In the end she gets up with a sigh and spends the remaining few hours looking out of the window. It won't be long now. They'll reach the Capitol in the morning.

***

“Did you calm down?”

She glares at Jessebelle without talking because she's sure that if she did she'd tell her to screw herself; to which the woman waves her fan (blue, today) and laments “one can't even ask” in a stricken tone. From the other side of the table Ash gives her a curious look.

“What happened?”

Misty sits and looks away. “We, huh, had an argument,” she grumbles. Then can't stop herself from lifting her glance. “Are you feeling better?” she asks him, and immediately wants to bite her tongue for it. _Don't let yourself care,_ she tells herself again. _Don't let it happen, you can't afford it._

Ash nods and smiles, a little awkwardly. “Yeah, yeah, I— just had a bit too much,” he assures her. Then seems to remember the way she replied to him yesterday and puffs his cheeks a bit. “I mean— what do _you_ care, anyway?”

She shrugs. “I don't. Just asking.”

A waitress places a tray of food in front of her and she stares perplexed at it. It would be enough for her and her sisters to eat for a week, and it's just her breakfast.

Ash has already started eating, very enthusiastically at that. He bites off a piece of bread so big he almost chokes on it, swallows, then asks: “Well what did I miss?”

“Not much, we watched the recap of the reapings.”

He considers with a "mmh", continuing to stuff his mouth. Misty raises one eyebrow.

“Careful not to make yourself sick again,” she comments. Ash exhales an embarrassed half laugh, spitting a few crumbs.

“I'll be, it's just that I had never seen so much food at once, you know?”

Misty smiles lightly, despite herself. Then turns to see Surge walk in. He sits down heavily at the table, earning an indignant flick on the wrist from Jessebelle's fan for his lack of manners, and grabs a cup of coffee from the tray that's promptly laid in front of him. He downs it at once, then looks at Ash.

“Did you think of something?” he wants to know.

Ash swallows and the lingering smile falls suddenly from his lips. “Think of something?” he repeats, slowly, though he probably did understand.

Surge gestures vaguely with the hand that's holding the cup. “A strategy. Something you can do.”

Ash lowers his eyes. “I didn't think about it,” he mumbles, after a moment.

“You didn't think about it,” Surge repeats. He sets the cup down with a thud that vibrates the whole table and sends a few remaining drops of coffee flying. “You'll have to, like it or not, and quick, or else you'll be dead.”

Ash's teeth sink into his bottom lip.

“I don't want to think about it either, you know?” Misty quickly says, before Surge can speak again. “But we need to, if we want to stay alive.”

Except there's no _we._ There's no plural. Only one of them can stay alive, and helping Ash means lowering her chances. _Don't let yourself care,_ she repeats to herself once again. _You don't know him, he's just a name on a paper strip, one of thousands._ He closes his hands around the edge of the table, his brow drawn tightly.

“I dunno if I can kill anyone,” he says. Surge frowns.

“Do you want to die?”

Ash hesitates. Then shakes his head.

“Well, you'll have to do one or the other, so make up your mind fast,” the man retorts harshly. Ash takes the blow in silence, looking at the tray.

Misty says nothing. She starts eating her breakfast, keeping an eye on the scene from above her mug.

“Look, we're almost there,” Jessebelle suddenly points out. Misty turns to the window, and the colorful buildings of the Capitol beyond it, and sets the mug down. Her stomach is suddenly in knots and she knows that all that food on her tray will have to go to waste.

“Get ready. From now on you're at war,” Surge warns them, before standing up to leave. He didn't touch anything either, except the coffee.

Ash looks outside for a moment, then looks down again. He's as tense as a bowstring, the tendons of his hands tight as ropes. Misty brushes his arm and he jumps.

“I'm not happy to be here either,” she informs him. “Nobody is.” She glares again at Jessebelle. “Except her maybe. Anyway, well... I know you don't want to be here. But you are, we all are, and we can't do anything about it, so... at least let's try to do our best.”

_I don't know if I can kill anyone either. I'm terrified too. I want to go home too._

“It's not easy for anyone,” she adds. Ash looks at her, then nods.

“I know,” he whispers. Then somehow attempts another faint smile, a bit wavery and unsure, but a smile nonetheless. “Well, let's see what's awaiting us, I guess.”

She nods back. Outside of the train windows the Capitol takes them in. _  
_


	2. II

Her prep team really polished her up. On the mirror-covered wall she sees a girl with perfectly shaved legs, arched eyebrows, nails flawlessly cut and filed and shiny hair. It hardly even looks like her. She feels uncomfortable and pulls the thin bathrobe around herself, despite that all three have already seen every inch of her.

“Don't be nervous, dear,” says one of the preppers, appearing behind her to take her hands and make her lower them at her sides. She studies her reflection in the mirror. “You know, you're not that bad, now that we've fixed you up a bit.”

Misty raises one eyebrow. “Thanks.”

The woman doesn't seem to notice the sarcasm. “You're welcome, dear,” she trills. “Well, I'd say you're ready, don't you think?” The other two nod. “We can call Lila.”

Her stylist, probably. The prep team leaves her alone and she instinctively pulls at the hems of her bathrobe again, trying to cover herself as much as she can. Aside from her, everything she sees in the mirror is a cold white that makes her think of a hospital. She tilts her head and her perfectly unknotted hair falls smoothly over her shoulder.

She turns when the door opens. Lila — or at least that's who she assumes she is — is a young woman with pale lilac hair pulled into an elaborated bun at the top of her head. Her dress too is all shades of lilac and purple, and her lips are painted the same color. All very fitting of her name. She was expecting someone more eccentric, though, because stylists usually are, and for a few moments she stares at her unsure. The woman smiles.

“Hello, Misty,” she says. “I'm Lila. I'm here to make you beautiful.”

“Hi,” Misty tries. Then can't stop herself from asking: “Are you also gonna tell me I'm not that ugly now that they've _fixed me up?_ ”

“Who said that?” Lila asks with a frown. Misty grimaces.

“The prep team.”

“Don't listen to them.” The woman comes closer. “Now let me look at you.”

She walks around her, watching her intently. She seems to think for a bit, them stops in front of her and takes her chin in her fingers, making her lift her head.

“Do you know what I've always liked about District K?” she asks, after observing her for a few moments more. Misty shakes her head. “The sea. And do you know what I like about you?”

She shakes her head again. Lila smiles.

“Your eyes. They're the same color at the sea. I'd never seen eyes quite like yours before.”

Misty attempts a hesitant smile, not knowing how to reply. Lila lowers her hand.

“Keep your chin up. At the parade you'll be as beautiful at the sea.”

***

A few hours later she's wearing a dress that looks like a wave. Layers of fabric of a shimmering blue-green unravel from the bodice, fading at the edges in a cream color that looks like a spray of seafoam. With her every moment they billow around her legs like the undertow and furrow in folds that resemble ripples on the surface. Her shoulders, arms and part of her back are bare, and her hair was pulled in an intricate updo adorned with seashells and ribbons the same color as the dress. Lila did her makeup personally, drawing blue waves on her eyelids and powdering her cheekbones with silvery highlights. “Chin up,” she recommended again, while she put the final touches. Misty looked at herself in the mirror wall and saw a stranger, a girl that didn't look like her at all.

She's never put on makeup before, and she never wore anything more elegant of Daisy's awful blue dress. She feels out of place, she doesn't know what to do with herself. She tries to keep her chin up like Lila said and she feels more awkward than ever. She's worried she'll trip, with her skirt almost brushing the floor, so the tries lifting it a little. The fabric is soft and fresh between her fingers, almost liquid.

She's relieved when she sees Ash. He's in a suit that looks at least as out of place on him as the dress does on her and on his shoulders is a cape made of the same shimmery fabric. He looks like he's wearing a wave too. He blinks surprised when he sees her.

“You look— nice.” he says, while his stylist busies himself around him touching up the cape. “You look like a different person.”

Misty cracks a smirk. “Does that mean I look bad usually?” she retorts, even if she doesn't really think that's what he meant. He turns a bit red under the foundation.

“N-no,” he quickly replies, stumbling. “It's just— you're really...”

Whatever he meant to say he doesn't have the time, because his stylist steps between them. “Come on, let's go or we'll be late.”

Downstairs awaits the chariot for the opening ceremony's parade, white and pulled by four horses of the same color. Lila helps her climb on board without stepping on the dress, then carefully positions her skirt, draping the fabric around her while Ash's stylist does the same with his cape. They both step aside a moment before the opening music starts.

The tributes from District U go first. Misty recognizes the girl she saw during the reapings recap, the one with brown skin and all that hair. She's wearing a dress full of ribbons and and a tiara, and her hair was combed in a halo around her head. Next to her is a pale-skinned blonde boy.

As the chariots pass by she recognizes the other tributes she remembers, too. The girl from S, in a pink dress with a puffy skirt and her blue hair styled in ringlets cascading softly over her shoulders; the tributes from H, the girl in a dark red dress that reminds her of a rose's petals and the boy with a rose pinned to his collar. They're holding hands, stood in a chariot full of flowers. While theirs starts moving the back of Ash's hand brushes hers slightly, like he thought of doing the same but stopped himself.

 _Chin up_ , she tells herself, feeling her stomach twist. In a moment they'll be in front of the crowd.

Their appearance is met with cheering. Misty catches their image on one of the maxi screens and can't help but be stunned: her dress and Ash's cape really look like waves. The fabric swells and tides with the chariot's movements and looks to be constantly changing colors, green and turquoise and blue that tuns almost purple in the folds, shining under the spotlights. They really look like they just stepped out of the sea.

She straightens her back and smiles, and while the chariot approaches the city's amphitheater instinctively she grabs Ash's hand and holds it. He's surprised, but he giver her a curious look and squeezes her hand in return.

“They like us,” Misty whispers, raising her other hand to wave at the crowd. On the screens they look strong, no longer just two scared kids; as strong as the sea. “They're all looking at us.”

The chariot starts slowing down to stop with the others in front of the President's residence, while the music wanes. For a moment Ash squeezes her hand a little tighter.

The President is a slimy-looking man in an orange suit, his hair slicked back on his head. He's holding the papers with his speech with hands full of bejeweled rings. Behind him, standing in a semicircle, are twenty or so Peacekeepers impassible in their black uniforms with the red R on their chest.

The cameras run over them one more time while the President speaks, then the national anthem starts playing as he reaches the final lines and the chariots start moving again one after the other, in the direction of the Training Center. It's where they'll spend their last days before the start of the games. Their chariot is the last to enter and the doors close with a sigh behind their backs, cutting out the crowd's cheers and applause.

The stylists and the prep teams reach them almost immediately and Misty suddenly startles and lets go of Ash's hand, feeling that illusion of strength fade at once. She lifts her skirt to climb out of the chariot. Lila helps her, her purple-tinted lips pulled in a beaming smile.

“They liked you,” she tells her, holding her dress so she won't step on it. “Both of you.”

Misty doesn't reply. Now that she's no longer hearing the crowd's cheers to boost her confidence she feels out of place again, clumsy in her way-too-voluminous skirt and her makeup that makes her look like a different person. “Can I change now?” she ends up asking. Lila nods, slightly surprised.

“Of course, if you want. Though it's a shame. You're beautiful.”

Misty looks down. “It doesn't matter. This isn't me.”

Lila shrugs a little. She seems to understand that something's changed. “Alright,” she says. “Let's find you something more comfortable.”

***

After changing, washing her face and undoing the elaborated hairdo she feels a little better. For a moment, looking at her reflection in the mirror after pulling the last ribbon from her hair and washing the makeup off, she wondered if the others would recognize her in the arena, if they'd remember her as the girl wearing a dress made of waves or the one standing on the stage on the day of the reaping, pale and with shaky knees.

The dinner awaiting them is even more overabundant than the one they ate on the train. Lila, busy chatting with Jessebelle, smiles at her while she sits; in frond of them are at least ten different trays covered in all kinds of dishes. She's the last, since she took the time to change, so almost everyone else's already started eating. Ash looks up at her for a moment and then away, embarrassed.

“Hey, li _f_ ten...” he mumbles with his mouth full. He stops to swallow. “Before, when I said you looked like a different person... I didn't mean— I mean...”

“I know,” Misty stops him. She leans over to fill her bowl with what looks to be a tomato soup of an unnaturally bright red. “I was just messing with you.”

He blinks. “Oh,” he pouts. He watches her a moment longer, then takes a bite from a loaf of bread and adds, talking around the mouthful again: “You look better without all that _f_ tuff on your face, though.”

She raises her eyebrows, but can't hold back a slight smile. “Thank you.”

“You were both fantastic,” Lila intervenes. “Even better than I hoped. Whose idea was it to hold hands?”

Misty hesitates for a moment, taking the time to swallow the bite she took from her bread. “Mine.”

She didn't think of it as something unusual. The tributes from District H were holding hands too, but now that she thinks about it she's not sure she's seen it happen before. Most of the time the two tributes stand impassible and far from each other, as if the games already started and the other is the already a mortal enemy; that's how it works, you can't really be a team in the arena. You can forge alliances for a while, but eventually the time will come to part ways or kill each other. The tributes from H probably knew each other before their names were pulled from the bowls. She had barely seen Ash a couple times before they ended up next to each other on the stage.

“Was it a bad idea?” she asks. Lila shakes her head, with gleaming eyes.

“Not at all,” she assures her. “It was memorable.”

Misty tries to convince herself that she's right, but suddenly she's thinking that she might find herself face to face with Ash in the arena and that possibility makes her nauseous. _You don't care,_ she has to remind herself. _You can't, you don't know anything about him._ But it's not completely true anymore, now. She knows that he always fills his plate to the brink and that he doesn't seem to want to think about having to kill anyone at all, even less than she does, and that yet he managed to smile at her. She knows that on the chariot he wanted to take her hand before she did.

 _It means nothing_ , she tells herself. _You still don't know him._ Yet she can't look at him for the duration of the dinner, and keeps her head lowered on her plate.

“Excuse me,” she whispers as soon as she's done eating. Jessebelle looks at her surprised.

“What's wrong? Are you not feeling well?”

“I'm just a bit tired,” she justifies herself. “It's been a long day. I want to be in good shape tomorrow.”

It's a good excuse, because tomorrow they'll begin training. Jessebelle waves her fan (turquoise, like her dress) and shrugs. “As you prefer,” she says. “Sleep well.”

“'Night,” says Ash, still halfway through a slice of cake. She half-smiles in his general direction, without looking up.

 _You don't care,_ she repeats to herself while she walks to her room. _You don't care, you don't care, you don't. You were lucky, it could have been someone you really know and it's just some kid you saw once or twice and never even really spoke to. You don't care. Why should you?_

She closes the door behind herself and leans her back against it. She breathes slowly, looking at the empty room. It's big enough her entire house could fit in it, and the sharp pang of nostalgia that hits her following that thought shakes her a little. She needs to think of herself if she wants to have a chance to go back.

***

On the first training session she focuses on the archery station, since it's the only thing she has some experience with. She's never been incredibly good, and it takes her a bit to familiarize herself with this bow, made of a different, more flexible material and with a sturdier string. Quite a few arrows end up sticking into the wood panels that cover the wall before she finally manages to hit the bullseye at all, but in the end she manages to strike the center a few times. It's still not enough, not yet, so she keeps trying until she can do it at least three or four times in a row.

She can't stop herself from taking a peek at what Ash is doing from time to time. He doesn't seem to have familiarity with any weapon, but he's surprisingly determined and stronger than she would have thought. The blonde boy from District U seems to have set his eyes on him too and on Ash's fourth or fifth failed attempt to toss a spear folds his lips in a grin, like he's already decided he'll be easy prey.

She checks on the other tributes, too. The girl from U is fantastic at climbing, using everything the training room has to offer. The boy from S, the one she saw walk on stage with an impassible face, grabs hold of the spear Ash was practicing with a moment before he can pick it up, almost tearing it from his hand, and tosses it at the target hitting it straight away without batting an eye before turning to go do something else, not acknowledging Ash when he says “wow, nice throw!”. The girl from H seems unable to use any weapon and terrified to try, and her companion almost comes to blows with another tribute who was looking at her the same way the boy from U looked at Ash. They're promptly stopped, of course, tributes aren't allowed to fight before the arena. There's a girl, the tribute from District J, who seems very agile and is good with knives.

She takes her focus back to the target. She nocks the arrow, pulls the drawstring and breathes out slowly, releasing it. The arrow lands a couple inches from the center. She pulls another from the quiver and tries again.

When she feels confident enough she decides to try something else. It won't be easy to find a bow in the arena, after all; best to try and learn to make do with something else as well.

She tries tossing a few knives, with not-too-great results. She can't control her throw and after an hour of practice she only struck the target once. Meanwhile Ash moved onto the archery station, but he clearly has no idea how to even hold the bow and keeps not even coming close to the target.

The boy from District U keeps watching him. He picks up the spear Ash left on the ground and throws it at the target without even looking at it. When it hits it he grins as if he's hit him instead.

Misty shivers and focuses on the knife to avoid thinking about it. She weighs it in her hand holding it by the blade and tosses it, stretching out her whole arm. This time the knife doesn't bounce back and the blade sticks to the wood of the target.

She picks it up to try again, but she can't stop herself from turning back. The boy is still looking at Ash, who doesn't seem to have noticed anything. Misty presses her lips together. She turns back to the target and imagines the boy standing in front of her, with that insufferable grin on his face, and when she tosses the knife the blow lands perfectly.

***

The morning of the second day of training she walks behind Ash while he tries to figure out how to hold the bow properly and places her hands over his to guide him. “Look at the target,” she whispers, while he startles slightly.

“What are you doing?” he asks. She shrugs.

“Helping you.”

“Why?”

She sighs a little. She lowers her voice further: “Don't look. There's the boy from U who keeps looking at you like he's already decided that he'll be heading home with your head on a pike, so maybe it's best if you learn to do something. Now look at the target.”

“I don't need help,” he protests. Misty glares at him.

“Well I'm helping you, so you're getting it. Do what I said.”

He pouts, but complies. She adjusts his hands in the correct position.

“The left on the grip, like this. Hold the arrow like this.” She moves his fingers so that three are pulling the string and the nock of the arrow is between index and middle finger, then places her hands on his waist to make him turn the right way. “You need to stand with your body perpendicular to the target. Spread your feet a little.”

He does as she said. Misty makes him extend his arm. “The left arm stretched, like this. Now pull the string. Your right hand needs to touch your chin.” She waits for him to find the right stance. “Do you see the target?”

He nods. Misty keeps her hands over his.

“Then be ready to let go when I tell you to. You need to keep your left arm still and let go of the string without moving your hand. Ready?”

She feels him nod. She takes her hands off. “Now.”

Ash lets the string go. It's not a perfect shot, but at least this time the arrow lands on the bullseye, though far from the center. Misty takes another from the quiver at their feet and hands it to him. “Try again. This time without my help.”

His brow furrows as he tries to remember her instructions. He holds the grip in the right way and nocks the arrow. “Like this, right?” he asks. She nods.

“Exactly.”

She watches as he fumbles a bit to figure out how to stand. He focuses on the target, breathing in, then shoots. The arrow hits the bullseye again, slightly closer to the center.

“Not bad,” she comments. She hands him the quiver. “Keep trying.”

She keeps watching him for a bit, adjusting his stance a couple times. He does a little better, though he still doesn't manage to strike the center of the target.

“How did you learn?” he asks after a while, as she guides his arm a little higher. Misty shrugs.

“I used to hunt for squirrels or rabbits in the woods sometimes, when there wasn't enough food at home,” she says. Thinking of home makes her eyes sting and she forces herself to blink the tears back. “Your arm is too low. It needs to be straighter. Like this, yes.”

Ash lets go of the string. The arrow lands an inch from the center.

“Why are you helping me?” he asks again.

“I told you, didn't I?”

“Yeah, but...” Ash nocks another arrow and looks at the floor, biting the inside of his cheek. “We'll be one against the other in three days. You shouldn't be helping me.”

Misty hesitates for a moment, then raises one eyebrow. “A 'thanks' would have been fine, you know?”

He lowers the bow and turns to look at her, blinking, like he just realized he's yet to say it. “Thanks.”

She gestures vaguely to say it's fine. “Keep practicing,” she tells him. She eyes an empty station. “I'll try some throws with the spear. See you at lunch.”

She turns to look at the boy from District U while she walks away. He glares at her, frowning under his blonde bangs. Misty picks up one of the spears and keeps her eyes on him until he looks away first.

***

At night she can't sleep, despite how tired she feels. She turns between her sheets until they're an unsalvageable mess, then sighs and gets up, and for a few moments sits on the edge of the bed. _I wonder if someone else is awake,_ she thinks. _Anyone else who's staring at the ceiling and just can't fall asleep._ Their rooms are completely soundproof, of course, no way to figure out if someone's else's up by listening. She finds her slippers and stands. She paces around the room for a bit, but still she doesn't even begin to feel sleepy, so instead of getting back to bed she opens the door and walks out in the hallway. She lingers a while, wrapping her arms around herself.

They're on the top floor, since their district is the farthest from the Capitol, so they can access the roof. At dinner Jessebelle said you can see the whole city from up there. She hesitates a moment longer, then heads towards the stairs at the other end of the hallway.

It's cold outside and she shivers a little, regretting going out in only a short nightgown that barely covers her knees. She realizes she's not alone after taking a couple steps: Ash is standing with his back turned on her, leaning against the railing of the terrace and seemingly watching the view below. She's deciding if she should reach him or not when she hears him sniffle.

She freezes, feeling suddenly uneasy. For a few seconds she only manages to stand in place, trembling slightly in her thin nightgown.

“I know you're there,” Ash says in the end, without turning. “I heard you come up.”

She lets out a little sigh, unsure, then concludes that now she really can't go back without saying anything. She reaches him.

“Are you okay?” she asks, resting her arms against the railing. Below them the Capitol is a shimmery multicolored sweep even in the dead of night. It would be breathtakingly beautiful if not for the fact that they're there to kill each other. Ash nods and stretches his lips into a smile, even if his eyes are clearly wet.

“Yeah, I was just thinking.”

Misty raises her eyebrows without replying. She looks back down. The main street, the one they rode the chariots on, cuts the city in two like a shiny artery.

After a bit she looks back at him. “How old are you?” she asks. “Twelve?”

Ash frowns. “Fourteen.”

“Really?” she marvels. She looks him up and down, noticing again his small frame, the few inches separating them in height. Ash looks perplexed and somewhat irritated.

“Yeah, why?”

She shrugs. “I thought you were younger, that's all. We're the same age.”

He says nothing. He looks back at the city and she does the same. For a while they're both quiet.

“It's beautiful,” she whispers finally. “I mean... it looks beautiful. If someone knew nothing of what happens here they could think that it really is.”

He replies with a distracted “hmm”. His teeth are sunk into his lower lip and he's clenching the railing. Misty waits for him to add something, but he doesn't.

“Are you okay?” she asks again, cautious, not sure if she's only doing it because she's there and she can no longer leave without saying a word and not come off as rude or because she really wants to hear the answer. She half-smiles, trying to lighten the mood: “Did you get offended because I thought you were twelve?”

He lifts his glance and looks at her, surprised. “Nah, it's not that,” he says, and looks away again quickly.

“Then what?” she asks.

Ash hesitates. He takes a shaky breath and finally says, like he's pushing out a weight from his chest: “I won't kill anyone.”

Misty blinks. “You'll die,” she retorts.

“I can run away,” he says, quietly. “I'm fast. As soon as the gong goes off I'll start running and get as far as I can. Then I'll just hide somewhere.”

“And then what?” she wants to know. “When there will only be a few tributes left? When there will only be one? You can't win by hiding.”

“Then I won't win,” he deadpans. Misty looks at him. His cheek works, like he's biting down at the inside of it. “I keep thinking... my mom cried when we said goodbye. I keep thinking that all the other tributes also have a family waiting for them at home, and that... we're all the same in here. There's no difference.”

She doesn't retort. The city light below them move like fireflies. The railing is cold under her arms.

Ash turns to look at her. “Do you think you'll be able not to think about it?” he asks. Misty says nothing for a moment.

“I want to go home,” she whispers in the end, without taking her eyes away from the lights. “I probably won't anyway, but I don't... I don't want to die without even trying to fight.”

He's silent for a bit. “Will you kill me, if we end up face to face?” he finally asks.

Misty can't reply. She presses her lips together, looking down still.

“That's a yes,” he concludes. She turns.

“No,” she retorts. She swallows. “It wasn't a yes.”

Ash says nothing. He watches the city and sinks his head between his shoulder a little, looking even smaller. He doesn't look fourteen. He barely looks twelve.

She looks back down as well. Below them the Capitol is still the same sweep of lights, yet she can't find it beautiful anymore.

“Why do they let us up here?” she asks after a while, almost thinking out loud. She wraps her arms tighter around herself, shivering. “Aren't they worried someone might jump?”

Ash shakes his head. “You can't. There's a forcefield all around the railing. It would stop you.”

Misty frowns at him. “You didn't try, did you?”

“No need,” he says. He stretches a hand and a sparkle emanates from the empty air, bouncing his fingers back. “See?” he says. He turns to finally take a good look at her and his brow furrows.

“Aren't you cold?”

“A little,” she admits.

“Let's go back inside then.”

She shrugs. “I can't sleep anyway.”

“Yeah, me neither,” he sighs. His eyes are still a bit wet and he wipes his arm over them, annoyed. A gust of wind pushed Misty's hair in front of her face and she tucks it back behind her ear.

“If you want...” she starts, then stops, regretting it, but it's too late now. “...we can still keep each other company. I mean, let's go back in because I'm about to freeze, but... we can keep talking. If you want.”

He considers for a moment, then nods. “Alright,” he agrees. Misty smiles slightly.

“Well let's go then, before I freeze for real.”

***

The third day of training is the last, and it ends with the private session in front of the gamemakers. The score they'll be assigned for their performance could make all the difference: a good score means better chances to receive help from the sponsors, and it also means letting the other tributes know you're no easy target. Even a twelve, the maximum score very few ever get, of course would not grant you the victory; but it sure would help.

Misty doesn't feel particularly brilliant today. She started with the bow, hitting the center of the target six times out of ten (and of the four times she missed one, the first, didn't even hit the bullseye at all because her hands were shaking too bad), then made the mistake of moving onto the knife throwing station and even if she'd practiced more just hours before she performed terribly. Of the four knives she tossed three bounced to the ground and only one stuck to the wood. Before she could try again one of the gamemakers dismissed her saying thank you, that's enough, and she felt a wave of nausea close in on her, sure she didn't get a score higher than three or four.

At dinner Surge leans his head over his hands, his elbows on the table, and looks at them with a frown. “How did it go?” he wants to know.

Misty grimaces, pushing her food around in her plate with her fork. “Not well, I think. I managed to hit the target a few times with the bow, but then I tried something else and I was a disaster.”

Surge looks at Ash. “And you?”

“Worse, probably,” he says, snorting a desolate laugh. “I tried to use the bow. It didn't go too well.”

“I thought you got a bit better with it,” Misty comments. He shrugs.

“I did too, but the gamemakers up there made me nervous.”

Surge sighs loudly. “Listen. Your score isn't everything in the end, unless it's really high. A four isn't that different from a seven. High scores catch everyone's attention, bad and mediocre ones both fly under the radar. However you did, it'll be fine.”

Misty tries to convince herself of it, but she thinks of the boy from District S, who struck the target with the spear on his first try, and the one from U, who didn't even need to look at it. She's sure they did leave an impression on the gamemakers. Compared to them she must have looked pathetic, a kid who could barely hold a bow the right way and recognize the pointy end of a knife.

When they gather in front of the TV to see the scoring, after dinner, she sits on the edge of the couch with her muscles tense and stiff. The nausea is still clinging to her, she barely even ate anything. She digs her nails into her palms when the screen lights up and the red R appears.

The tributes from District U both did really well, getting a ten and an eight respectively. The boy from S got an eleven, almost the max. Of the others none really stood out, except the girl from J who got an eight as well. The remaining average is around five or six. The lowest grade is the girl from H, a three.

The words _DISTRICT K_ appear on the screen and misty clenches her fists tighter. Ash's picture appears on the screen first, followed by a five. Then it's her turn. Next to her picture flashes a seven.

Seven. It's not that bad. It's better than the three or four she expected, and it's better than what a lot of the other tributes got, except the best ones. Maybe she was wrong after all, maybe she really does stand a chance. Until she runs into the boy from District U with a spear, at least.

“Could have been worse,” Surge comments with a sigh. He gives her a pat on the shoulder that almost topples her off the couch. “You did well,” he adds, cheerful, then looks at Ash: “You'll have to be careful. You're on the lower end of average, some might consider you an easy prey for it.”

Ash gives a “hm”, and Misty thinks about what he told her last night. She looks away.

“Five isn't that bad after all, right?” Jessebelle chimes in. “I mean, some did worse.”

Ash says nothing. He looks straight ahead while the screen turns black. Misty follows his glance and suddenly it hits her that there's really not much time left now. Tomorrow and the next day will be spent on their interviews, then they'll spend their final night at the Training Center. The following day the games will start. Less than seventy-two hours and they could both be dead.

It's a terrible thought, a blade cutting straight through her. “Excuse me,” she whispers, her stomach suddenly swept by a wave of nausea ten times worse than she felt in front of the gamemakers. She doesn't wait for a reply, she stands and walks out quick, only stopping when she reaches her room. She closes the door behind herself with shaky hands and slides down until she finds herself sitting on the floor.

Less than seventy-two hours. It's nothing, it's a flash.

She feels like throwing up. It takes her hours to stop shaking.

***

Jessebelle prepares her for the interview instructing her on how to walk, how to sit, how to smile, which tone of voice to use. She keeps using the tip of her fan to make her lift her chin every time she looks down and after a few hours Misty starts to feel like tearing it out of her hand and slamming it in her face repeatedly.

“You come off too aggressive,” Jessebelle sighs in a distraught voice. Misty glares at her.

“I'll have to kill people. Being aggressive seems like the bare minimum.”

“Tomorrow you don't need to kill anyone,” the woman points out. “You need to make friends.”

“They're not friends, they're people who'll bet on my life,” she retorts. She puffs her cheeks and Jessebelle flicks her with the fan.

“Stop pouting, smile,” she scolds her. She tries to lift her chin again. Misty grabs the fan and rips it from her hand.

“Where are your manners!” Jessebelle reacts in shock. “You certainly won't charm the audience acting like this!”

“But it makes no sense!” she protests. She tosses the fan to the ground, frustrated. “They should like me for who I am, not for... for this charade! Once I'm in the arena they'll have to see me the way I really am. This isn't me. The stupid chariot ride wasn't me either.”

Jessebelle sighs like she's refusing to understand an extremely simple concept. “It's all part of the game. It's a tactic, if you want to call it that. Tomorrow you'll try to win the audience's favor. If you manage to, they'll stay with you in the arena, even if you won't be wearing a pretty dress or curtsy for the cameras. And being liked by the audience means potential sponsors.”

Misty keeps silent, pouting. Jessebelle bends over to retrieve her fan and lets out another sigh.

“Shall we try again?” she exhorts.

They keep getting nowhere. Eventually Jessebelle gives up and hands her over to Surge. Misty sits on the couch in front of him, leaning her forehead against her hand.

“I hope you're not gonna try to teach me to curtsy as well,” she grumbles. The mentor looks serious at her.

“I'm preparing you for a war,” he says. Misty can't keep from rolling her eyes.

“I thought you were preparing me for an interview.”

Surge waves his hand vaguely in the air. “Same thing. The games start the day after tomorrow, but the war's already on. You need a strategy.”

“Such as?” she sighs.

“We're here to find out,” Surge replies. “You have an advantage for getting the audience's attention at the opening parade and another small advantage on some of the other tributes for getting a decent score, but this alone isn't enough. We want them to root for you.” He ponders for a moment, leaning over and taking his chin in his hand. “I'm trying to figure out what your strength might be. Friendliness, maybe? Charm? What would you say?”

She thinks about it for a moment, taken aback. She sits up straighter. “I don't know,” she admits. “What did Ash say? Or is it a secret?”

“Ash easily comes off as fairly likeable,” he says. For a second he flashes a grin. “I thought you noticed. He told me you helped him with the bow. Why did you do that?”

She gives a shrug. “The boy from District U was looking at him like he was already looking forward to killing him.”

“So what?” Surge wants to know. “He wasn't looking at you.”

“It was irritating,” Misty cuts him off. “Can we change the subject?”

Surge raises his eyebrows. “Sure, we're here to talk about you after all,” he says. “Although perhaps this could be a starting point. You helped someone who'll be your enemy in two days and who could use what you taught him against you. Do you think you're particularly altruistic, or compassionate?”

 _Ash will never use it against me,_ she thinks. She bites her lip. “No,” she answers. “Not especially.”

“So do you think you'll be able to kill with ease, then?”

Misty looks up. “I'm not a cold blooded murderer,” she answers. “But I want to go home.”

“So you're going to fight?”

“Yeah. Why are you asking me these questions?”

He watches her. “I'm trying to understand who you are.”

“Nobody special, I guess,” she sighs. Surge leans over a little.

“I don't think so,” he says. He studies her still. “There's something shining in you. We just need to find it.”

***

She spends most of the next day in the hands of her prep team. She almost falls asleep a couple times while they busy themselves around her, because last night she hardly slept again. She went to the roof, this time bringing a blanket, but Ash wasn't there and contemplating the Capitol's lights alone in complete silence only made her feel uneasy and somewhat lightheaded.

Her hair is first braided and then gathered behind her head, leaving her neck bare save for a couple of artfully curled ringlets. It's adorned with flowers in white, turquoise and blue. Looks like Lila is going to have her wear something reminiscent of the sea again. Next is the makeup, and the preppers shade her eyelids with a gradient that goes from purple to aquamarine and redraw the shape of her eyes to make them look bigger, deeper, her eyelashes longer and shimmery. “You have pretty eyes, you're lucky,” says one of the three, and Misty considers it a step up from the “you're not that bad now that we fixed you up” she got on the first day and concedes a slight smile. Pearly blusher is powdered on her cheeks, and her lips are overdrawn to look fuller. From the mirror a stranger again looks back at her. Charming, perhaps, but unknown.

“Wait till you see the dress,” one of the preppers says, before starting to paint her nails. Her skilled fingers draw waves in the same colors as her makeup, blue, aquamarine and purple.

It's afternoon when Lila finally walks in pushing a mannequin. “I hope you'll like it,” she says with a smile, dropping the sheet that covers it.

The dress is a waterfall of veils in turquoise and blue, the shades of which seem to change as soon as she moves her eyes. Artfully scattered, in a pattern that imitates she ripples on the surface of a calm sea, are sprays of glitter that catch the light and reflect it like water. Intricate lines of gems shaped like droplets adorn the bodice, joined to the skirt by a puff of white tulle like seafoam against the beach.

“Like it?” she repeats, incredulous. “It's beautiful.”

“I'm glad,” Lila says. “Let's see how it looks on you.”

While the prep team adjusts the dress around her, carefully draping every fold and piece of fabric, Misty watches her reflection in the mirror again. Now it looks more unknown than ever. The girl standing in the middle of the room is a creature from the ocean, one of those mythical beings in the sailors' old songs. She borrowed a wave to make it her dress and remind everyone that she's majestic and powerful just like the sea.

Lila takes a few steps back to see the overall effect. “You're wonderful,” she comments, clasping her hands together. “You will shine tonight.”

Misty smiles a bit, unsure, and hopes that all that glitter will be enough for that, because if there really is something shining in her like Surge said they never figured out what.

The interview is only a couple hours away and they fly by way too quick. Jessebelle, all dolled up in a pompous blue dress, keeps correcting her posture and telling her to stop fiddling with her hands or her skirt. “It's such a beautiful dress, stop ruining it,” she scolds her. Misty looks down at her hands and sees that some of the glitter is now sticking under her nails.

Ash, with Surge, doesn't show up until it's time to get onto the elevator to the ground floor. He's wearing a white suit, fairly simple, with a wave pattern. He smiles at her and she tries to smile back, even if she's so nervous she barely manages to.

They'll be the last ones, as usual, and they'll have to sit on stage waiting for their turn. “You'll do great,” Lila whispers to her, a moment before she climbs the steps. It's hard to keep her balance, between the skirt and the high heeled shoes she's never worn before, and she has to stop herself from gracelessly lifting her dress to get it out of the way.

They're live in front of the entire nation. The thought stops her breath in her chest. Not a single TV will be off tonight, and not a single house in any district will suffer a blackout; and it'll be worse than the opening parade because smiling for the audience won't be enough this time. She thinks of her sisters, who are surely watching her, and wonders what impression they'll get. What they'll think when she'll answer the questions in such an unremarkable, uncharming way that no one in the audience will remember or want to sponsor her, and if they'll think her dead already.

The interviewer is a blue haired woman named Gabby. She walks on stage and greets the audience cheerfully, then cuts straight to the interviews without wasting time. They're only three minutes each, after which an alarm signals that it's time to move onto the next tribute. Misty finds herself trying to memorize everyone's names, not really knowing why. She'll have to kill some of them, and she knows she'll have to avoid thinking of them as people as much as she can to manage to, and knowing their names sure won't help. Yet she can't stop herself.

The boy from District U goes first. His name is Trip, and he answers the questions nonchalantly, like he's perfectly at ease. He winks at the audience as he stands up and Misty finds it vaguely repulsive. The girl is Iris, the one who's really good at climbing. She's energetic and aggressive and when Gabby asks her if she feels ready she pumps her fists in the air and roars like a dragon. The boy from S, Paul, gives cold almost one-word answers, without ever showing any semblance of emotion. He shrugs when Gabby asks if he thinks it'll be hard for him to kill others and says he doesn't see why it should. Misty meets his glance for a second while he walks back to his seat and feels a shiver down her spine. Dawn, the girl, talks about how she volunteered in place of her dearest friend and pirouettes in her pink dress full of ribbons.

The two tributes from District H really did know each other. The boy, Drew, says he'd give his life to protect the girl, and it stirs up quite a sensation in the audience. He's holding a rose and hands it to her while he goes back to sitting, and she twiddles it in her hands while she talks with Gabby and squeezes out a few tears saying that there's nothing worse than knowing that only one between you and the person you love will survive. Her name is May. The audience gives her a moved applause. The girl from J, Marina, acts like she was born to be in front of the cameras; while the boy — Jimmy — seems nervous and uneasy.

The closer they get to their turn and the harder it is to focus. Of the remaining tributes she barely registers the names: Lunick and Solana for District F, Kellyn and Kate for A, Ben and Summer for O. When Summer walks back to her seat it's Ash's turn. He's not bad, he answers the questions a bit awkwardly but comes off genuine, stumbling just a bit even if he kept shifting nervously in place as he waited. He manages to make the audience laugh, even. Looks like he's appreciated, and Misty remembers what Surge told her: _Ash easily comes off as fairly likeable._ He was to her as well, no point denying it.

When she hears the alarm she bites the inside of her cheek until it hurts. She stands almost automatically as she hears her name called. She's worried she'll trip on her dress and fall face first to the ground, but it doesn't happen and she makes it to the center of the stage. Gabby holds out her hand and she shakes it.

“So, Misty,” the woman begins. “How do you like the Capitol? It's quite different from District K, I imagine.”

“Quite, yeah,” Misty answers, or tries. Her voice comes out as a hoarse whisper. She swallows and feels her mouth drier than paper.

“Speak up a little, dear,” Gabby encourages her. “So what impressed you the most?”

Misty thinks about it for a moment. “We had the top floor of the Training Center, us from District K. A few nights ago I went to the roof,” she says in the end, trying her best to keep her voice from shaking. “I looked down and the Capitol was this huge sweep of lights. What impressed me was that it was so... beautiful. I had already seen it on TV, of course, but I still thought... it'd look different. Darker. I thought it'd look scary, given the reason I'm here. But instead it was beautiful, and it struck me that this could look like such an enchanting place when so many kids come here to die.”

There are a few murmurs in the audience. Misty catches sight of her image on the screens and is surprised to realize she looks strong, in her dress that looks borrowed from the sea and the makeup underlining her eyes and making them appear intense and determined. Almost threatening. Gabby looks uneasy and quickly changes the subject.

“Let's talk about your dress,” she says. “I remember you wore a sea inspired dress at the parade too. Am I right if I assume you like the sea?”

Misty nods. “I do.”

“What do you like about it, in particular?” the interviewer wants to know.

“I grew up close to it,” Misty answers. “I learned how to swim before I could even walk. I always saw the sea as a second home. It makes me feel safe, because when I'm underwater it's as though nothing can reach me. But... I know that the sea can be terribly dangerous, too, and swallow you forever if you're not careful and you don't know it well enough, and that's what I like. The fact that it can protect you but also be powerful enough to destroy you.” Something sparks deep inside her chest. She pauses, then turns towards the audience. “I— I like to think I'm a bit the same way. I could protect you if I decide to, but if you come close without being careful I can make you pay the consequences.”

This time the audience reacts with a captivated silence. Before Gabby can ask anything else the alarm goes off, and the woman wishes her good luck and gestures for her to go back sitting. Misty tries to look straight ahead and not meet the eyes of any of the other tributes as she does.

They stand back up shortly after for the anthem. The cameras run over them as the music rises, and Misty keeps her head up, trying not to falter. She doesn't know what kind of impression she made, but for a couple moments somehow she really did feel like the creature she saw in the mirrors when the prep team finished adjusting her dress. Inscrutable and powerful.

When the anthem ends they leave the stage to go back to the Training Center. Surge pats her on the shoulder as soon as they step out of the elevator.

“That's what I was talking about,” he comments. “I knew you could shine.”

“I just said some nonsense,” Misty retorts, embarrassed. She turns and catches a glimpse of her reflection on the elevator's doors. It's still majestic, still fascinating, but it's a stranger again. It's not her, and she's not at all sure she'll live up to what she said once she's in the arena.

“You impressed them, that's what matters,” Surge insists. She looks away.

“I guess,” she says. “I'll go get changed. I don't feel comfortable like this.”

***

Halfway though her last night at the Training Center she slips out of bed, dragging her blanket along. She should sleep, because tomorrow she'll be in the arena and every second that she'll close her eyes to rest will be a second someone could use to attack her, but the more she tells herself to sleep the more her body feels active and electric. She can't lie still, her heart is running so fast it takes her breath away and her muscles are all pins and needles, aching to move.

It's two am. Tomorrow she'll have to be up at dawn. Thinking about it only makes her more nervous, so she wraps the blanket around herself and walks out of the room.

Her footsteps echo in the hallway. The roof is empty, and she leans against the railing and watches the Capitol's lights for a bit. It's cold even with the blanket, so in the end she goes back inside and closes the door behind herself. She sits on the stairs and hugs her knees to her chest, resting her temple against the wall. Just a few hours, she thinks, and it doesn't feel real, like her whole body is numb. Like she felt after Jessebelle called her name. Just a few hours and the Hunger Games will begin. Just a few hours and she could be dead.

“Can't sleep?”

She jumps. Ash is at the bottom of the stairs. “You neither?” she asks, while he sits a couple steps below her.

“Looks like it,” he says. Misty stretches her lips in the faint attempt of a smile.

“Wanna keep me company?”

Ash turns to look at her. “Not sure, you were a bit scary at the interview,” he says, with a small hint of laughter.

“Well, maybe you should be scared,” she teases, then sighs: “You can come close. It was just for the show anyway.”

“Well, looks like it worked. They were all amazed.”

“You did well too.”

Ash gives a grim smile. “You could win. I really believe it.”

“If I run into the guy from S with a spear I doubt blabbering about the sea will help me,” she retorts. She looks at him. “Do you still think you won't...?”

He looks away. He pauses for a moment, gathers his knees to his chest and nods. Then turns back to her and smiles again, even if now his eyes are slightly wet.

“I really hope you win,” is all he says, and on the last couple syllables his voice cracks until it breaks. He quickly lowers his head and hides his face against his knees, smothering a tense breath that almost sounds like a sob.

Misty bites down on her lip, unsure. She hesitates for a moment, then scoots a little closer and lays a hand on his back. She doesn't know what else to do, then, and leaves it like that, feeling clumsy and out of place.

“I'm really scared, you know?” she confesses, straining to keep her voice from wavering as well. She's quiet for a couple moments. “I have three older sisters. Now they're all older than nineteen. None of them was ever reaped. I thought maybe I'd be that lucky as well, maybe our whole family was somehow, but well, I guess the odds really weren't in my favor, huh? I've never been this scared in my whole life.”

Ash lifts his head. “Me neither,” he whispers.

She takes the hand back, stroking his back lightly enough to be completely unintentional. “Let's get back to bed,” she says. “We should really try to get some sleep before morning.”

Ash nods. They walk back downstairs and through the hallway in silence, a few steps from each other. When they're back in front of their bedrooms Misty turns to look at him.

“Run,” she tells him. “As soon as the gong goes off just turn and start running as fast as you can.”

“I will,” he promises. “You... fight, alright? Show them you don't mess with the sea.”

Misty folds her lips into a smile. “Goodnight,” she whispers.

“'Night,” he replies. Then turns away.

***

In the morning her heart is pounding in her temples and her stomach is upside down, so much she can barely stand straight. She doesn't see Ash; Lila calls her before dawn and brings her to the hovercraft that'll take her under the arena. She didn't really sleep, she only managed to doze off briefly, and now she feels her eyes burn like they're full of sand.

On board the hovercraft a nurse with pink hair approaches her with a syringe. “It's your tracker,” she says, before grabbing her arm and sticking the needle into it. Misty jumps and can't hold back a yelp.

She forces herself to eat her breakfast despite the nausea because a full stomach will help her in the arena. She can't taste anything. She tries looking outside to distract herself and feels even worse, the view makes her head spin. She pushes her plate aside even if she couldn't finish everything and she's almost relieved when the windows go dark, indicating that they've almost reached the arena and that from now on she won't be allowed to see. Almost. For the most part she's just terrified.

When the hovercraft stops the ladder lowers them in a tube that leads to the catacombs, the underground of the arena. From there they reach the launch room. At home they call it the stockyard, like the place where animals go before they're slaughtered, and she realizes that's an apt description for how she feels.

Lila helps her get dressed, handing her a dark gray shirt and a pair of jeans trousers. She didn't pick her clothes, they're the same for all the tributes. The boots are comfortable and sturdy. She tries to stand still while Lila brushes her hair and gathers it in a low side ponytail, even if she can't stop twisting her hands and it takes her all her might to keep her breakfast from ending up on the floor. _Don't you dare_ , she tells herself, _it'll be hard enough to find food in the arena, you have to hold onto this._ Lila makes her wear a jacket, light but warm enough, then walks around her and places her hands on her shoulders.

“Breathe,” she says. Misty tries to retort something, realizes she doesn't know what, stumbles with the words trapped in her throat. Lila's hands squeeze her shoulders a little tighter. “Breathe,” she says again. “Come on. You can do it. Take a deep breath.”

She tries and the woman gives an encouraging nod. The nausea subsides a little. “Better?” Lila asks, after a couple minutes. Misty nods.

“You don't know anything about the arena, right?” she asks. “I mean, what kind of place it's going to be.”

“Unfortunately no,” answers the woman. “Do your clothes feel alright? Is everything the right size?”

Misty nods again. “I think so.”

“Good,” Lila sighs. She strokes her cheek briefly. “Then now all that's left is waiting for the call.”

“How long will it take?” she wants to know. Lila shrugs.

“I don't know for sure, about half an hour. You can sit if you want.”

Misty shakes her head. “I don't want to sit. I can't.”

“As you prefer,” Lila concedes. She sits on one of the metal chairs by the wall while Misty paces between the four walls of the room. _Breathe,_ she keeps telling herself, because she feels like she's suffocating and the thought that they're underground isn't helping. _Breathe_. The seconds drag like molasses, too slow and yet too fast at once.

When the speakers announce that it's time to prepare for the launch she panics. Lila stands and grabs her by the shoulders again, reminding her to breathe.

“Good luck,” she whispers. “I wish you all the best possible.”

A glass cylinder lowers from the ceiling to take her in, forcing Lila to let go. Misty slams her palms against the transparent surface, without it making a sound.

The cylinder starts moving upwards. She clings to Lila's image below her as long as she can, but it's only a couple seconds before she's in the dark. A few seconds more and the metal plate under her feet starts pushing her out into the open.

She blinks, blinded by the sunlight for a moment, and her mind registers trees and the blinding gold of the cornucopia. Then the speaker's voice echoes all around her.

“Ladies and gentlemen, let the 71st Huger Games begin!”


	3. III

In the sixty seconds before the gong Misty quickly looks around. She and the other tributes are standing in a circle around the cornucopia, a tall golden structure filled to the brink with weapons and food and clothes and medicines. At the sound of the gong it'll turn into a bloodbath to grab as much as possible and several of them will likely die in the first few seconds of the game. She sees a couple bows in there, but trying to get one would be suicidal.

Around the clearing they're in the trees thicken. If she starts running as soon as the sixty seconds are up she'll probably easily manage to get away from the others before someone can get her. She'd be unarmed and without food or water, though, and she's not home, in the woods she knows, and there are no guarantees she'd be able to find either. Maybe she could aim for some of the supplies farthest from the center. Maybe she'll manage to grab something and run.

She sees Ash right as the gong goes off. For a couple moments her feet refuse to unglue from the platform. Then she sees him jump from his and start running in the opposite direction of the cornucopia, and she startles and jumps down as well.

Around the cornucopia it's already a chaos. Aiming for the weapons is out of the question, she'd be dead before even managing to touch one, but there's a backpack on the ground maybe thirty feet from where she's standing, tossed to the side like someone kicked it there. There could be anything in it, or nothing, but it's the closest thing to her and without wasting any more time Misty leaps in that direction. She bends over without stopping and hooks her arm into the straps, and then someone grabs her by the waist and throws her to the ground, falling on top of her with all of their weight.

She yelps and tries to wiggle out of the grasp. She manages to turn, holding the backpack like a shield. It's the girl from District U, the one good at climbing; she bares her teeth at her and holds her legs down to stop her from getting up. She tries to rip the backpack from her hands while Misty attempts to push her off. The girl's nail dig into her wrist, scratching her skin, and then Misty manages to free one leg and instinctively raises it to her chest and kicks blindly.

Her foot collides with the girl's chin. It's enough for her to let go and Misty quickly gets up and starts running again, aiming for the trees. The girls lets out a frustrated scream and starts running after her, but stops when she realizes she's already distanced her and turns back to jump into the brawl around the cornucopia. Misty keeps running, without stopping until she's sure the trees are thick enough to hide her from sight, then lets herself fall on her knees in the bush, scraping her palms on the branches.

She stays put for a few moments, waiting for her heart to stop pounding. Then fixes a strap of the backpack that came loose and puts it on without bothering to check what's inside. She lifts her head a little and glances rapidly at the cornucopia, diving down between the bushes immediately after. Several of the tributes are still fighting and some are on the ground, dead or nearly so. The survivors are starting to scatter, though, and it means that she needs to get away too before someone reaches her. She takes another quick peek, then stands and starts running.

She manages to keep the pace for a good while, slowing down from time to time to catch her breath and listen to check if someone's around. The forest is thick and seems to go on forever, composed largely of plants she's never seen before. She sees a lot of berry bushes, some similar to blueberries, some large and bright red, some purpleish and elongated. Surely many are poisonous. Some starving tributes will likely try to eat some and be dead before they even know what's killing them. But she knows how to recognize edible plants, her mother taught her. She stops next to one of the bushes and picks a handful of berries; inspects them closely and squishes some in her hand, sniffing her stained fingertips. They're real blueberries. She stuffs a couple in her mouth before going on.

She starts hearing the cannon shots after a few hours. One for each dead tribute. The chaos around the cornucopia must have dissipated and the bodies are being retrieved; on the first day they always wait for the fighting to be over because until then it's too hard to keep count. Misty stops and counts the shots, digging her nails into her palm until it hurts. Five. That's five of them who are already dead and are heading home in a coffin.

Suddenly she wonders if Ash is one of them. She saw him run away, but for all she knows someone could have followed and reached him. _I'm fast,_ he said on the train on the first day, but the thought isn't especially reassuring. Someone could be faster. Someone could be able to toss a spear several feet away.

She doesn't feel too steady on her legs and she thinks she got far enough for now anyway, so she crouches on the ground and takes the backpack off. She opens it to see what's inside: a small packet of cereal crackers, half a bottle of water, bandages and a bottle of disinfectant, a lighter. It's not a lot, and it's not a weapon, but she got lucky enough after all. At least she has some food and water to start with, and can look for more with more ease.

She looks down at her scraped hands and wrist were the girl from U dug her nails. The scrapes are light, but her wrist bled a little and she decides that it's best to disinfect it. Better be careful, infections are a danger in the arena. She wets a small piece of gauze with the disinfectant and grits her teeth a little as she presses it against her skin.

Five shots mean there's eleven of them left, including her. She bites the inside of her cheek wondering who the others are. The ones who got high scores probably managed to survive: the boy from U and the one from S, the girl from J. They probably managed to grab some weapons.

 _Ash had a low score,_ she thinks, and then reprimands herself, almost angry: _it means nothing._ He didn't even take part in the bloodbath, she saw him run.

And maybe, she finds herself thinking, maybe it would be better if he was already dead. If he's still set on not killing anyone hiding until the end won't do anything. You don't win without killing. At least for him it would all be over already.

She doesn't want to keep thinking about it, so she puts the backpack back on and starts walking again. She stops a couple times to pick some blueberries, careful to follow her mother's teachings from so many years ago. She's never learned as well as her sisters, but she still knows enough to be reasonably sure the berries she stores in her backpack are edible.

It's late afternoon by now. By the time the sun starts going down she's thirsty and her throat is burning, but she doesn't want to use the water in the bottle before she finds more. She's tired, anyway, and the oncoming darkness is a signal that it's time to stop and find a place to spend the night. You never know what could be hiding in the arena; there have been years when at night the tributes found themselves surrounded by wild animals of all kinds.

It's starting to get cold, too. Misty rubs her arms shivering and keeps walking for a bit still. She's got a lighter, but a fire would mean almost certain death; anyone in her vicinity would see the light and immediately know where she is. The jacket will have to be enough.

She stops when she spots a tree with roots big and protruding enough to slip under them. She takes the backpack off and sits. Her stomach growls, and she tries to calm it eating the blueberries, which are juicy and sweet and manage to quench her thirst a bit too. It's nothing compared to the meals she had at the Capitol and she finds herself eyeing the packet of crackers, but she forces herself to leave it where it is: she might not find more food tomorrow. In the end she closes the backpack and stuffs in in a cavity of the trunk near the ground, tearing a few branches from a bush to hide it better. She zips her jacket up to her chin and lies down to crawl under one of the bigger roots.

The space is so small and cramped she has to gather her knees to her chest. She'll be warmer this way, but she'll probably wake up sore all over.

It's cold for real now, the temperature dropped very rapidly. She blows on her hands to warm them ad then pulls at her jacket's sleeves to cover her fingers. Her stomach grumbles again, unsatisfied, and she tries to silence it by pressing her arms over her middle.

She crawls out of her hiding place again when she hears the first notes of the anthem. The Capitol's red R appears in the sky. It's actually a screen, held by two hovercrafts, but in the darkness it looks to be floating mid-air. It's the signal that starts the recap of the deaths. Misty finds herself biting down on the inside of her cheek until it hurts, waiting.

At home she would have seen a detailed report on each of the tributes, but here it's just their picture flanked by their district's letter. The first to appear is the boy from J, the one that looked nervous during the interview. It means that the tributes from U, S and H are all still alive. Next are both tributes from F and the girl from A. That's four. Misty holds her breath before the last photo appears. It's the boy from O.

That's all. The red R appears again and the music ends in a few trumpet notes, then the sky goes dark again.

Ash is still alive. He wasn't among the five dead tributes, which means he really managed to run away.

 _You shouldn't care,_ she reprimands herself, slipping back under the root and wrapping her arms around herself to keep warm. But she does. She already did when she saw the way the boy from District U looked at him and taught him how to hold the bow.

She spends most of the night shivering and trying to settle into a more comfortable position. Her fingers are freezing. She tucks them under her armpits and curls up as tightly as she can, eyes wide open in the dark.

Little by little she feels her eyelids get heavy. She's not sure if sleeping really is a good idea, in this cold, but she's tired from walking all day and from not sleeping almost at all the night before and after a while trying to keep her eyes open is a lost battle.

She lets them close. If she must freeze to death in her sleep, she tells herself, so be it. Surely it's one of the most pleasant ways to die in the arena.

The thought of Ash bubbles up in her mind again as she drifts into sleep. _I wonder if he found somewhere to hide_ , she thinks, and then her exhaustion gets the best of her and the thought slips away fading into a dream.

***

She's awakened by a sudden noise, like something snapping. For a moment she can't remember where she is and sits up too quickly, hitting the back of her head against the root. She groans and rolls onto her stomach to crawl out. Her fingers are numb from the cold, and the muscles in her back and her legs protest having been stuck too long in an uncomfortable position.

It's morning. Misty rises onto her knees and rubs her head, brushing back a strand of hair that slipped out of the ponytail Lila did. Pieces of bark and soil got stuck in it overnight.

She remembers about the noise only when she hears it again, a crack like a branch breaking somewhere to her right. She turns and for a second she thinks she sees something move between the trees, a shadow that's quickly gone from her sight.

Misty holds her breath and stands up slowly, her eyes glued to that spot. For a minute or two she hears nothing else. Then suddenly there's a hiss and an arrow sinks into the tree's bark inches from her head.

She recoils at once, with a jump, and without stopping to think leaps over the root she slept under and crouches to the ground with her heart racing. She quickly evaluates her chances: she could stand and run and then whoever is targeting her would have a clear shot to hit her in the back. She could stay there and the other would just need to come a few steps closer to see her. She could find some way to strike back, but she doesn't have any weapon and she doesn't even know where exactly the other tribute is.

She dares to lift her head slightly and another arrow hits the root, barely missing her. Misty throws herself to the ground again, lets a few seconds pass, then quickly sits up and grabs the arrow to pull it from the bark. It takes a couple moments for it to budge and for a blink she's sure she's done for. She ducks back behind the root holding the arrow between shaky hands.

She hears footsteps. She runs her eyes over the trees around her, then cautiously stands, her back against the trunk and the arrow held to her chest. The forest is silent for a handful of seconds. Then there's the sound of branches breaking under someone's feet and she catches another glimpse of something moving, a flash of blue hair and the silvery shine of one of the quivers she saw by the cornucopia. The blue hair makes her think of the girl from District S. She wouldn't have thought her the type to get her hands on a weapon.

She presses her lips together. She attempts to step to the side, without tearing her back from the tree, and before she's even put her foot down there's another his and then another and two more arrows hit the wood, missing her by a few inches.

She's too far away to aim with precision. Misty sprints around the tree and crouches down again, scanning the forest. For maybe ten seconds there's only silence and she holds her breath. Then the sound of footsteps, again, and now she sees her clearly: the girl from S is standing less than thirty feet from her, the bow raised and another arrow nocked. Dawn, Misty remembers, and right as she does the girl shoots.

This time she misses her by a hair. Misty doesn't waste any more time and leaps over one of the roots again, losing her balance and landing gracelessly on the other side. She grabs the backpack, stands up and starts running, the arrow still held tightly in her other hand. Another flies close. Misty glances back: the girl gives up trying to hit her, or maybe she ran out of arrows, and slings the bow on her shoulder to chase after her.

But the time she wasted on the last attempt made her fall behind. Misty distances her a bit more, then quickly dives among the bushes to her right.

She stays put for a few seconds, waiting for the girl to reach her and slow down, frantically scanning their surroundings. She didn't see her. But she still has some arrows left and she slips the bow from her shoulder, and now she's so close there's no way she'd miss.

Another couple steps and she'll probably spot her. Misty lets go of the backpack, holding the arrow she pulled from the tree like a knife. She waits for the girl to look away for a split second and as soon as she does she rises to her feet and throws herself at her.

She manages to push her to the ground, in a flurry of dead leaves and dust that flies in her face. The girl screams in surprise and fear and then grabs her by the hand that's holding the arrow, trying to twist her wrist to make her drop it. “Let me go!” she yells squirming, her blue hair spread among the leaves. She's got a cut on her forehead and dried blood sticking to her bangs.

Misty hesitates, her heart a loud thunder, and it's enough for the girl to manage to roll onto her side and use the momentum to turn the situation around and wind up on top of her. Her hair falls down on Misty's face, blinding her for a second. The girl keeps twisting her wrist and manages to make her bend it until the arrow's head is inches from her throat.

“I'm sorry,” the girl says. Her voice trembles slightly and her hand is unsteady as well, but she keeps pushing. With the other she's pinning her left arm to the ground. Misty tilts her head back to get her neck farther from the arrow and with a last ditch effort manages to straighten her wrist, pointing it upwards again. The girl growls and lets go of her other arm to use both hands, and as soon as her fingers loosen Misty takes her chance to raise her left to grip the arrow and push it upwards with all her strength.

The arrow's head sinks into the blue haired girl's throat. Misty sees her eyes widen and her lips part, in an expression of bewildered shock. A few drops of blood fall down on her cheek. She shakes her off herself and crawls away until her back is against a tree, trembling so hard that she can barely move. For a long handful of moments she can only remain still, while a few feet from her the girl gasps and arches her back trying to breathe with the arrow sticking out from her neck and the blood soaking the ground around her. Then stands, her knees threatening to buckle. She picks up the bow and one of the arrows scattered around the quiver with badly shaking fingers.

She aims for the girl's heart. She see her eyes, blue as well and still gaping and wide. She shuts hers and shoots the arrow.

She lets a few seconds pass, counting slowly up to thirty with her eyes still closed. When she opens them the girl's body is lying still.

Misty drops the bow as if it burned. She manages to take two or three steps back before her stomach twists so violently that her knees finally give way. She falls to the ground on all fours and tries to vomit, but her stomach is empty and she manages little more than a few dry heaves. She has to let a few minutes pass before she can move again.

She hauls herself back to her feet and picks up the bow, carefully avoiding the sight of the dead girl. She rounds up the remaining arrows, but leaves the two sticking from her throat and her chest. She has to touch her to get the quiver off her back. She remember the pirouette she did on the stage, in a pink dress with a puffy skirt, and she has to press her hand to her mouth to keep from retching again.

There are four arrows. Misty lingers a while, the bow in one hand and the quiver in the other. Then slings both over her shoulder and picks up the backpack she'd dropped in the bushes. She walks away fast, without turning back.

She's almost made it back to the tree when she hears the cannon shot. It means she's far enough for the hovercraft to intervene, and it also means that the girl from District S is really dead. Not that it could be otherwise, after she shot an arrow in her heart, but somehow having the definitive certainty turns her stomach again. She keeps her eyes down while they take her away.

She retrieves the arrows stuck into the tree's bark. Now she's got eight of them. She sticks them in the quiver with the rest, then takes the water bottle from her backpack and swallows two sips, even if she'd decided to save it until she'd find more. She closes the backpack and puts everything back on her shoulders. She wipes the blood off her face with her arm.

She's about to start walking again when a movement catches her eyes. It's not another person, it's something small up above her head, near the treetops. She looks up, raising a hand to shield her eyes from the sun, and sees the small silver parachute descending gently to the ground. A gift from a sponsor.

It lands near her feet. It's a loaf of bread, round and big enough to fill both of her palms. Tied to the strings of the parachute there's a note as well, written in a handwriting she doesn't recognize but has the hunch it belongs to Surge. It's just two words: _Well done._

A raspy snort of bitter laugh escapes her throat. She leaves the note and takes a small bite from the bread, sticking the rest into her backpack. She chews it slowly while she starts walking, trying to get rid of the taste of her vomit.

***

She spends the rest of the day stocking up on blueberries and continuing to move, searching for water. It must be around midday when she hears another cannon shot. She jumps and instinctively turns to the sky, but she doesn't see the hovercraft coming to retrieve the body. It's probably too far away. The thought that it might have been Ash claws at the back of her mind and she pushes it away, pressing her lips together and speeding up her pace. A few minutes later the cannon goes off again.

She keeps jumping and freezing at every noise, but she doesn't meet any other tribute. By late afternoon she's eaten half of the bread and some of the crackers, and some blueberries to calm the thirst. She hasn't found water yet. Despite the blueberries her throat is burning, and she ended up emptying the bottle despite her resolution. She curses at the sponsors under her breath for not gifting her water instead of bread.

The sun is starting to set and she's about to give up when she hears the stream. She lifts her head, her eyes wide, and a moment later she's running in that direction.

She finds herself in front of it after making her way through a tangle of shrubs. She lets out a muffled triumphant cry and lets herself fall on her knees on the bank, cupping her hands in the water to drink. It's cold and wonderful. She fills the bottle, then washes her face and undoes her ponytail to run her fingers through her hair and rid it from some of the dirt stuck in it. While she ties it again she catches a silvery glimpse of a fish. Maybe tomorrow she could try and catch some.

It's starting to be cold, meaning it'll be completely dark soon. Sleeping on the ground proved not to be a good idea, so she finds a tree with low branches, close to the stream, and climbs it to a fork large and sturdy enough to sit comfortably on, about ten feet from the ground.

She takes off the bow and the backpack and tries to wedge herself against the trunk so she won't be too likely to turn in her sleep and fall. She pulls up the collar of her jacket and buries her hands into the sleeves, getting ready to spend a good deal of the next few hours trying not to freeze.

When the anthem starts playing and the R appears in the sky she sits up a bit straighter to see and holds her breath. The first to appear is the girl from District S and she has to look away, feeling another wave of nausea. The next is the girl from H. The one with the rose and the tear-jerking confession on stage — May, if she remembers correctly. She wasn't expecting it: she thought her companion would really manage to protect her. She expects the third will be Ash, but it's not him. It's the boy from A. Misty remembers the two cannon shots she heard one after the other and wonders if it was him who killed May from District H and if her companion then killed him in revenge. Or maybe not, maybe it was just a coincidence and both were killed by something else.

Five deaths on the first day, three on the second. Half of them, she realizes suddenly.

She rests her back against the tree. She's still alive, that's what she should be thinking about. She survived the first two days, that's already more than she'd hoped.

And Ash survived too. Hidden who knows where, determined not to kill anyone, somehow he made it alive until now. It's unusual for both tributes of District K to last long in the arena. Usually they're among the most unprepared and first to die.

The tributes who got the highest scores though are still all alive. If she comes across the boy from S, or the one from U, she'd probably have a much harder time than she did this morning.

She curls up a bit, shivering. No use thinking about it now. Now she'd better worry about getting a few hours of sleep and making it alive to the morning.

***

The next morning she wakes up without hearing footsteps or the hiss of arrows. She stretches her arms above her head, trying to soothe her stiffened muscles, then loads the bow, quiver and backpack onto her shoulders and climbs down from the tree. She nearly slips halfway down, but manages to grab hold of a branch and gets out of it with only a few new scrapes on her palms.

She dusts pieces of bark off her jeans, then looks around, to make sure she's alone. When she's certain of it she walks back to the stream and sits down on the bank. She's hungry, so she takes off the backpack and eats the remaining crackers, chewing slowly.

Her glance's caught again by the silvery scales of a fish and she remembers she wanted to try and catch some. She tried fishing with her bow and arrows a few times, at home, but never with great results. But here the water is shallow and quite slow. Maybe she'll manage.

She takes up the bow and grabs an arrow from the quiver. It takes a while for another fish to show, and when it finally happens the arrow misses and sinks into the mud at the bottom. Misty sighs and sticks her arm in the water to retrieve it, then nocks it once more, to try again.

She's about to try for the third time after another unsuccessful shot when she sees the bushes move in the reflection on the water, and instinctively she tenses and listens, almost holding her breath. She hears a rustle that could be the wind or an animal, then a sudden crack that's unmistakably a branch snapping under someone's shoe. She turns without making a noise, the arrow still nocked. She's got an advantage, the shrubs will hide her from sight a few moments longer. Maybe if she's quick she'll manage to shoot her arrow before whoever's there sees her. Maybe she'll manage to hit them before having to look them in the eyes.

There's some more rustling, another crack, then a pair of hands emerges from the shrubs to open the way. Misty draws the string of her bow, her breath trapped in her chest. Then stops.

It's Ash. He notices her right as she recognizes him and freezes mid-step, recoiling with a jump, and for a handful of seconds that seem to stretch on forever they both remain still, in the silence broken only by the babble of the stream. Then Misty lowers the bow.

Ash looks at her and at the water behind her, biting his chapped lips, but doesn't move. Misty sighs a little.

“I won't shoot,” she assures him. “You can come closer.”

He hesitates a moment still, unsure, then takes half a step forward. When she still doesn't aim the arrow back at him he steps closer, cautious at first and then faster. He rushes past her and bends down on the bank, almost falling to his knees, and suddenly seems to forget that she's still holding the bow and that from there she could hit him without even trying. He dunks his hands in the water to drink in long avid gulps, with an urgency and a desperation that tell her that if it's not the first thing he puts in his stomach since they stepped in the arena it must be damn close.

She puts the arrow back in the quiver. “Do you have anything to eat?” she asks. Ash shakes his head, wiping his mouth with his arm.

“I found some berries, but they made me really sick,” he says. He grimaces: “I threw up for a whole day. They probably didn't show that on TV.”

“You're lucky they didn't kill you,” Misty sighs. She grabs her backpack and pulls out the remaining bread. She breaks it in half and hands one piece to him. “Here. Eat this.”

She hears his stomach grumble as he looks at it. “How did you get it?” he asks, cautiously taking it from her hand like he expects it to be hiding some lethal weapon. Misty shrugs slightly, looking away.

“Sponsors,” she answers, vague. Ash looks at the bread and then at her.

“I didn't get anything.”

Misty keeps her eyes on the ground. “It was to congratulate me, I guess,” she grumbles, grimly, putting her backpack back on.

“Congratulate you for what?” Ash asks, then gets it. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

Ash bites down on his lip. “Who...?”

“The girl from S, yesterday morning. The one with blue hair,” Misty answers. She looks at the bread still in his hands. “Are you gonna eat it or not? I'll take it back if you don't want it.”

He hesitates still, then takes a bite off it. Misty sighs again. She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, then stands and walks up to one of the bushes growing along the water, and picks a handful of berries before walking back to him. “These are blueberries. You can eat them, they won't make you sick.”

He frowns. “Are you sure? I'd rather avoid another round of that.”

She grabs a couple and sticks them in her mouth. “Is this enough to convince you?”

He nods. She lets him have the rest of the blueberries and sits back down, looking at the stream. The surface of the water reflects the treetops.

“Why are you helping me?” Ash asks. Misty gives him a glance.

“Would you rather I didn't?”

“No, I was just thinking...” he starts, and then stops and looks down. Misty looks away as well and hugs her ankles.

“I don't want you dead,” she says. Then turns back to him. “Do you have any weapons?”

Ash shakes his head. “I didn't even try to get any.”

“Did you see any of the others?”

“The girl from H, yesterday, before she... you know, and the guy from U who almost got me. I managed to run away.”

“You can stay with me for a while,” Misty offers. “If you want.”

Ash lowers his eyes again and says nothing. Misty watches the water.

“The girl from S attacked me,” she says. “I woke up to find her shooting arrows at me. She would have killed me if I hadn't done it.” She clasps her fingers tighter around her ankles. “I want to go home. I want to survive and forget about this, if I'll ever be able to. Don't you?”

Silence. Then a small nod.

“Stay with me then,” Misty says. Ash is quiet still and she knows he's thinking the same thing she is: they can't both win. She can try and protect him and herself for a while, and let him try to protect her, but eventually they'll have to split up or she'll have to kill him. Or let him kill her, but she knows he won't.

She takes up the bow again. Ash looks curious at her.

“What were you doing?”

“Trying to fish something.”

“Got anything?”

Misty shakes her head. Then turns to look at him for a moment, pulling her lips into a slight smirk. “Unless I count you.”

Ash laughs. “A fish would have been a better catch.”

“You never know, in a pinch I could always roast you and eat you,” she retorts. He looks taken aback. “I'm kidding.”

“Oh.” Ash blinks. “I mean, of course. I got it. Very funny, ha-ha.”

Misty takes her glance back to the stream, unable to hold back a small hint of a laugh. “Now hush. You'll scare away the fish.”

***

In a couple hours she's managed to catch two fishes. They're both small, but she judges they'll be enough for the two of them. She lights up a small fire in a circle of rocks, taking advantage of the fact that the sun is still high and the light won't immediately signal their presence, and fashions a spit from a branch. When they're sufficiently cooked she hands one to Ash. He looks hesitantly at it.

“Are you sure you want me to eat it?” he asks, even if he's clearly hungry. “I mean... you caught them.”

She shrugs. “One is enough for me for today, and by tomorrow it'll probably have started to spoil. And you need to eat, if you didn't have any food for two days. I don't want to have to haul your unconscious body around.”

He looks uncertain at it for a moment longer, then accepts it and thanks her with a smile. When they're done eating Misty scatters the rocks with her foot and buries the fishbones in the leaves, to avoid leaving an obvious trail.

“It's best if we start moving soon,” she says, standing and batting some dead leaves off her pants. “It's not safe to stay in the same place for long. We could follow the stream.”

“Fine,” he agrees. “Do we leave now?”

“Not right away, I want to pick some more blueberries first. So we'll have something to eat, in case we can't find anything else.”

He grimaces a bit. “I still don't trust them all that much,” he whines.

“You ate them before,” Misty reminds him. She reaches one of the bushes and studies the shape of the berries and the leaves closely. “You're not throwing up and you're not dead, I'd say. Trust me, I know how to recognize them.”

Ash watches her lay her backpack on the ground and start filling it. “How did you learn?” he asks after a while. She lifts her head for a moment.

“My mother taught me,” she answers. “Though I'm not that great. I've seen a lot of berry bushes in here, but blueberries are the only ones I recognize.”

“You're sure better than me,” Ash retorts. Misty smiles slightly.

“My sisters are better at it.” She's quiet for a bit. “We have this big book full of drawings of plants at home. It was our grandma's before she passed it down to our mother, but she added a lot of new plants to it. Drew them and everything.”

“Your mother sounds cool,” Ash comments. Misty lowers her eyes on the backpack.

“She was.”

There's a moment of silence. “...Oh,” Ash whispers in the end. “I'm sorry.”

Misty rips another handful of berries from the bush. “She died when I was seven,” she adds. She tightens her fingers around the branch and hears it snap. “She was sick and we couldn't afford the medicines.”

“I'm sorry,” Ash says again. He hesitates. “You and your sisters live with your father, then?”

Misty shakes her head. “Our father left before I was born,” she says. She closes the backpack and wipes her purple-stained fingers on her jeans. “I've never met him. We're alone, my oldest sisters Daisy took care of us.”

She picks the backpack up and walks back to him. “Do you want to know something funny?”

He frowns. “What?”

“My mother was named after a flower,” Misty says. She sits next to him by the water even if they're leaving soon. “And my sisters are all named after flowers, too. And they all have a sensational green thumb. I'm the only one in the family with a name that's got nothing to do with plants. My sisters always teased me saying it was the reason I've never been too great with them.”

“I for one think you're good,” Ash retorts. “After yesterday I don't know if I'd trust anyone else trying to feed me any kind of berries.”

“Everyone else in here probably wants you dead, so that's a good call,” she says. She puts the backpack on and picks up the bow and quiver. “Shall we go?”

Ash nods and stands. “Which way?”

Misty shrugs. “Either way is fine. North?”

He nods again and for a while they follow the stream in silence. “My father left too,” he says after a while.

Misty looks at him. Ash kick at a rock, sending it rolling into the water.

“He used to say he was sure there was a way to escape from District K. That he could take us away from there and we'd live a better life somewhere else, he thought he'd found a way out, he just needed to come up with a safe plan and then he'd come back to get us. We never saw him again.”

The way he looks at his feet tells her that he knows he's almost certainly dead. There's no way out of the districts. If they catch you, the best thing that could happen to you is being accused of treason and imprisoned for life or used as workforce, usually after having your tongue cut at the root. Traitors from the poorest districts usually don't get that option either. A life from District K is worth too little to even waste space in a prison cell.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” she asks him. Ash shakes his head.

“It's just my mother and me. I mean... it was. Now it'll be just her.”

“You're not dead yet,” Misty points out.

He shrugs a little. “Same thing.”

Misty hesitates for a moment. Then slow her pace a little to finds herself at his side and places her hand over his briefly, giving it a squeeze before letting go. “For now we're both still alive. We have food and water and we made it to the third day. We didn't do too bad. Let's think about this for now, yeah?”

“Yeah,” he concedes. Misty smiles.

“Good. Let's go on.”

***

A couple miles ahead the stream dwindles and flanks a tall rock wall. Misty stretches one arm across the water and follows the rough surface distractedly, brushing absent-minded its nook and crannies with the tip of her fingers until the stream grows wider again and brings it out of her reach. It's still afternoon, but the sky's clouded over.

They haven't heard any cannon shots. It means no one else has died since yesterday. She runs over the remaining tributes in her mind: both of them, both tributes from U, the boy from S and the one from H, the girls from J and O. Barring the last one, which she doesn't remember much about, they all feel like a potential treat. Better with weapons and stronger, or more agile and resourceful than she is.

And then of course there's the other thought, the one she's trying in every way to avoid. The Hunger Games can't have two winners.

After another half an hour of walking she notices an opening in the rock. She points it out to Ash: “We could stop here. It'll be dark soon, at least we'd have shelter for the night.”

“Alright,” he agrees. Misty crosses the stream, stepping over a couple large rocks that emerge from the water, and peeks inside the opening: it looks large enough for both of them to fit in. She puts down the backpack, keeping the bow on herself just in case, and uses the last hours of light to weave the branches of some nearby shrubs together to try and hide the entrance as much as possible.

“Maybe it'll shield us from the cold too,” she hopes, though it probably won't. The sun is setting. “Are you hungry? I still have some bread left, and the blueberries.”

Ash shakes his head. “I'm fine, it's best if we save them,” he says, but accepts the water when she offers the bottle.

When it starts getting dark for real Misty adjust the branches so that they'll cover the opening entirely, then takes the bow and the quiver off her shoulders and lays them against the wall of the cave. There were no deaths, so no reason to wait for the anthem.

Ash rests his back to the wall and gathers his knees to his chest. His stomach gives a grumble and Misty asks again if he wants something to eat. He denies again, but eventually accepts a handful of berries. In the end he lies down on his back, rubbing his arms to warm himself up.

It starts raining less than an hour later, when both of them have yet to fall asleep. At first it's just a drizzle, but it turns into a downpour within minutes. _Good thing we found this cave_. It's awfully cold, though, and the opening isn't deep enough for the wind not to reach them, spraying them with a good amount of rain as well despite all her work.

Behind her Ash's teeth chatter. “Can't we light a fire?” he asks after a bit.

Misty shakes her head without turning. “If someone's close they'd see the light and know we're in here,” she answers. Her jeans are wet. She feels like her legs are about to freeze. She hesitates: “But if you want you can come a bit closer. So we'll be warmer.”

There's silence for a couple moments. Then she hears him move and feels his side against her back, his bones all pointy under his clothes. He must be awfully thin. She feels him shiver and for a second she's tempted to turn and wrap her arm around him to warm him and herself. But she bites her lip and doesn't move.

She can't sleep much. She drifts a few times in a light sleep full of nightmares and keeps startling awake, and having to force herself to remain still because Ash is asleep against her back and she doesn't want to wake him up too. The blue-haired girl's eyes haunt what little rest she gets.

Shortly before dawn there's a cannon shot. Misty's eyes snap open. “Are you awake?” Ash whispers after a moment.

She nods.

“Did you hear that?”

“Mmh.”

“I wonder who it was.”

“We'll find out this evening,” she cuts him short. She props herself up on her elbow and sits, slowly, stretching her aching muscles. It's still raining. Most of the branches gave way during the night and some rain now falls directly on her face, cold and sharp like needles. She tries wiping it off with her sleeve, but it's damp as well.

“We're both gonna catch pneumonia at this rate,” Ash grumbles. His lips are blueish from the cold. Misty sighs and stretches a hand towards him to give his arm a rub, then unties her hair, running her fingers through the tangles. Some of it got caught in the hairtie.

“Where did you sleep the other two nights?” she asks him, curling up around her knees. Ash tilts his head back to look at her.

“On the ground, in the forest,” he answers. “You?”

“The first night on the ground under some tree roots. The second on a tree.”

“A tree? Weren't you scared to fall?”

“A little,” she admits. “I guess falling and breaking my neck still seemed more appealing than risk being attacked in my sleep again.”

“Again?”

“Yeah, the girl from S.” She bites her lip. “I woke up because I heard her footsteps. Otherwise she'd probably have killed me before I even noticed anything.”

Ash says nothing. Misty lowers her eyes and hugs her knees tighter.

“Do you think I'm a monster?” she asks, quietly. He seems surprised.

“No. I mean, you did... what you had to. You defended yourself.”

“And what about her, the girl? She was defending herself too, in a way. If you have the chance to kill someone and you don't they'll be a threat to you later.”

He's silent for a moment. “It's this whole thing that's the monster,” he whispers in the end. “The Hunger Games. We're just stuck in here.”

Misty stretches her lips in the faint shadow of a smile. She lifts her head, towards the rain that still doesn't begin to dwindle.

“You know...” says Ash after a while. “I keep thinking that I couldn't kill anyone, but... at the end of the day, who knows what I'd do in the same situation. You can't know it, right? Not really.”

She thinks about the arrow she pushed into the blue-haired girl's neck. A shiver runs down her spine.

“No,” she agrees. “You can't.”

“How many of us are left, do you know?” Ash asks.

“Seven. Including the two of us.”

“Seven,” he repeats. “That's less than half, right?”

“Yeah,” she sighs. She finds nothing else to say, then, and keeps watching the rain.

After a while Ash sits up as well. “I don't envy those stuck outside,” he says, leaning his back against the cave wall next to her. She nods.

“Me neither.”

For a while they're both quiet. It keeps raining for what feels like hours, enough that eventually Misty drifts into half-sleep again. When she startles herself awake again the rain has stopped and the sun is high. “Why didn't you wake me up?” she grumbles, her voice a bit groggy. Ash gives a shrug.

“Thought you needed some rest. You didn't seem to sleep much earlier.”

“I kept having nightmares,” she says. She looks outside. “When did it stop raining?”

“A couple hours ago, maybe,” Ash answers. Misty lets go a small sigh.

“Let's eat something,” she proposes, and her stomach promptly punctuates it with a growl. “Then let's go on.”

***

She leaves her hair down so it'll dry faster and picks up the backpack and the bow. There's barely anything left of the branches she'd tried to hide the cave with, and she pushes them aside, irritated, before crossing the stream again. She looks around while Ash reaches her.

“I got water in my shoe,” he grumbles, waggling his foot to try and shake it off. “Which way? Do we keep following the stream?”

Misty shrugs. “I'd go with that, at least we'll have water.”

For a while he's silent as they walk, his brow drawn in a pensive frown. Misty glances at him every now and then, trying to decide if she should ask him what's wrong or not. But she elects to keep her focus on the forest around them, listening carefully and scanning the trees, ready to react at the slightest movement.

“Misty?” he says after a while, his voice low. Misty turns to look at him for a moment.

“What?”

“I was thinking...” his voice trails off and she sees hit teeth dig into his lip. “How long... I mean... how long do you think we can keep being a team? You know...”

 _We can't both win,_ is what he's trying to say. _We can't both win and the cannon shot a few hours ago meant there's less time now, and it'll be even less when we hear another, unless one of us is next._ It's the same thing she was trying desperately not to think about, and she turns away abruptly, looking straight ahead.

“It's still too soon to think about it,” she states, firm. “There's still seven of us.”

Seven isn't a lot, though, and she pushes her nails into her palm trying to fight the thought. She only manages to hurt herself.

Behind her Ash lets out a small sigh. He hesitates. “I was thinking something earlier, while you slept.”

“Shh,” she hushes him, raising a hand to signal him to stop. She heard something, a rustling in the leaves. She listens, hushing Ash again when he wants to know what's going on. There's silence for a few seconds. Then there's a quick movement to their right, a silver flash among the trees. “Get down!” she yells, pushing him aside a moment before a knife flies right past them. The blade lodges into a trunk with a sharp thud.

Quick, she takes the bow from her shoulders and nocks an arrow, pointing it in the direction the knife came from. “You missed them, I told you to leave it to me,” a voice grumbles. She can't figure out where it's coming from and she looks around, confused. “Shut up!” another voice hisses back.

“Stay behind me,” Misty whispers. There's a rustle above their heads and she looks up, catching a glimpse of the silhouette darting with ease between the branches of a tree. A moment, then the girl from District U jumps from a height of ten feet or so and retrieves the knife, climbing right back up immediately after. In a blink she's disappeared among the leaves again. Misty hears more rustling directly above them and tries to aim the bow, but seconds later the noise repeats coming from farther away, and again and again, each time from a different direction. She's jumping from tree to tree. When she stops she has no idea where she is.

She looks around almost frantically, her heart racing. She doesn't see the knife flying at her until it's almost too late and yelps when Ash grabs her by the shoulders and pushes her to the ground. The impact takes her breath away for a moment, filling her vision with sparks. The blade hits the ground inches from her face.

She grabs the knife and stands back up quickly, pulling Ash by his jacket. She notices a gash in his sleeve. “Run!” she yells, shoving him, and sticks the knife in her belt to aim the bow again. She looks back without stopping, trying to spot the girl's silhouette between the trees. She thinks she sees her and shoots an arrow in that direction, without hitting anything.

From above rains a hail of rocks. One collides with the back of her head, sparking another flash of stars in front of her eyes. She shoots another arrow blindly and then another, but it's useless: as soon as she thinks she's seen her she's somewhere else entirely.

She stops, trying to aim more closely. Ash pulls at her arm. “What are you doing? Let's go!”

Misty stands still, the bow aimed upwards and every muscle and tendon in her body tense and ready. She holds her breath and presses her lips together. It's less than a blink. She sees her appear again, balancing on a branch with another handful of rocks in her lap, and without stopping to think lets go of the string.

For a second she thinks she didn't hit her this time either. Then there's a groan and the girl plummets from the tree, falling from a height of at least forty feet. If the arrow wasn't around to kill her the fall is.

Misty looks away shuddering. “She wasn't alone,” she whispers, turning to Ash. “Let's get away from here. Quick.”

Before she's even had the time to finish there's more rustling, running footsteps, and the shape of a person leaps out of the bushes and throws itself at her. She falls onto her back and the bow flies out of her fingers; the quiver lodges itself between her shoulder blades tearing a cry of pain out of her throat. The boy from District U holds her down locking his knees around her waist.

“Hi, sea,” he mocks her, grabbing her wrist to pin it to the ground. Misty manages to claw at his face with her nails, splitting his lip and leaving a red mark on his cheekbone; then reaches for the knife.

He notices and acts faster, pulling it from her belt. He pins her other arm down with his elbow, then grins and presses the blade to her throat, enough to stop her breath. “What were you saying at the interview?” he taunts, his face an inch from hers. His eyes are incredibly blue, colder than ice. She coughs, tilting her head back, and feels the blade scrape her skin. “I think I forgot, could you remind me? Maybe you thought—”

He stops suddenly and his eyes widen. The pressure of the knife on her neck lifts. He opens his mouth as if to speak and instead coughs blood onto her face. Misty pushes him off and rolls to her side, coughing with a hand on her throat and her heart pounding in her temples. When she props herself up to sit she sees Ash standing with her bow in his hands. There's an arrow sticking out of the boy's back.

They stare at each other for a few moments, neither of them managing to say or do anything. Then Ash drops the bow and doubles over pressing his hands against his mouth, like he's trying desperately not to throw up. His knees drop against the leaves. Misty tries to stand to reach him, but she's shaking so violently that she's forced to give up and crawl to him on all fours. She lays a hand on his back and keeps it there until he manages to stop retching.

He takes his hands off his mouth cautiously and looks at her. His eyes are wet. “You're bleeding,” he notices, looking at her neck.

She wipes it with the back of her hand. “You too,” she realizes then. His sleeve is stained red around the gash. She places her arm around his back and tries to pull him to his feet, even if she has to lean against him to stand herself. “Come on. Let's get away from here.”

She picks up the bow and pulls him away, keeping her arm around his waist. She can feel him shake. When they're far enough for the cannon shots to be fired he retches again, finally emptying his stomach of what little he'd eaten.

“Don't look,” Misty whispers, when the hovercraft lowers to retrieve the bodies. She closes her hand on his shoulder while he stares at the ground and breathes shakily. When the noise of the engine fades she makes him sit.

“Take off your jacket,” she tells him. He does. The wound is a couple inches below his shoulder. It bled a lot, but it doesn't look too deep and she feels more optimistic after cleaning it. “It's not bad. You'll be fine,” she assures him. “I need to disinfect it though. It's going to burn. Ready?”

Ash nods. He grits his teeth and breathes in sharply when she presses the disinfectant against his arm, but doesn't complain. He looks at her when she's done bandaging the wound.

“And you?” he asks. His voice falters. “Your neck?”

She touches it again. She doesn't feel more blood. “It's nothing, just a scratch,” she says, but disinfects it anyway for good measure. She touches the back of her head and feels a bump, but when she brings her fingers in front of her eyes she doesn't see any blood.

She looks at Ash. “Thank you,” she tells him. “You saved my life.”

Ash tries to pull his lips into a faint smile but doesn't really manage to. Misty puts the disinfectant and the remaining bandages back in her backpack, and as she does she notices that her quiver still has four arrows. She had eight, and she used four against the girl, hitting her with the fourth. If she still has four more and the quiver was on her shoulders the whole time Ash must have gotten the one he used from her dead body.

She sits next to him and wraps her arm around his back again, and she feels his body give, lose strength all of a sudden. “Hey. Remember what you told me this morning?” she says, trying her best to sound like she really believes it. “The Hunger Games are the monster. We're just stuck here. Surge was right, it's a war.”

He nods slightly. He hides his face against his knees and stays that way a while, and Misty judges that maybe she can do the same. She keeps her arm around his back and waits, quietly.


	4. IV

When they make it back to the stream she washes her face and her hair to get rid of the mud and the blood, careful to avoid the bump on the back of her head. She feels slightly better after.

It must be around noon, judging by the sun's position, so she grabs the bow and tries to fish for a while. It's easier this time, maybe because the water here is even more shallow, and within an hour or so she's managed to catch two fishes. Ash accepts one, even if he's still pale as a sheet.

“What did you want to tell me?” Misty asks. “Before they attacked us.”

He swallows a bite, looking at the ground at his feet. “It was stupid.”

“Tell me anyway,” she insists. He finishes eating and leaves the remains of the fish on the grass.

“I was thinking...” he whispers, lowering his voice to the point that she has to lean closer to understand. “If we keep following the stream... I mean, the arena can't go on forever, right?”

Misty frowns. “What do you mean?”

He looks around nervously and lowers his voice further. “I was thinking that maybe well, if we make it to the end of the arena maybe we could... try to run away.”

“There's a forcefield around it,” Misty points out, cautious. “Like on the roof. Otherwise everyone would run away.”

“Maybe we can break it somehow,” he insists. “I don't know, maybe hitting it with something, shooting arrows at it.”

“I'm afraid it's not that easy,” Misty whispers. Ash presses his lips together and stands, abruptly.

“Then maybe it's best if we part ways now,” he says, his eyes on the ground still. “There's only five of us left.”

She stands as well and lays a hand on his arm. “No,” she retorts, closing her fingers around it as if to hold him there. “It's not a bad idea.”

Ash glances at her. “Really,” he scoffs.

“Well, maybe it is a bad idea, but it might be the only chance we have,” she replies with a sigh. “So why not try.”

“You could have a real chance,” Ash reminds her. “You're good. Maybe you can really win.”

“Maybe I don't want to,” she retorts. She lowers her voice as well: “Let's not talk about it anymore now. In a bit we'll start walking again like everything is normal and we just decided to keep moving.”

Ash looks unsure for a few moments. “Fine,” he gives up then, and goes to sit by the stream while she disposes of the evidence of their meal.

She keeps thinking about what he said as they walk. Nobody ever managed to escape the arena, of course, but she doesn't remember anyone ever trying either, and it's certainly not something she'd forget. Maybe the Capitol elected not to broadcast it, turning the cameras elsewhere the entire time; maybe someone did try but had to give up, because there's no escape. Or maybe they died trying. A lot of tributes die alone, from the cold or the hunger or an infected wound. Covering up an uncomfortable death would probably take little effort.

 _And even if we managed to,_ she thinks to herself, _even if by some miracle we managed to escape, then what?_ They'd probably be worse off than traitors. Going back home would be impossible. And yet it seems almost as impossible now, even if Ash was right and she really did stand a chance. She'd have to let him die or kill him and she doesn't know anymore if she could manage either.

 _Stupid._ For a moment she wishes she'd never spoken to him. Never taught him how to use the bow, never stayed with him on the roof of the Training Center.

There's another cannon shot about an hour later. Misty jumps and can't stop herself from craning her neck to see the hovercraft. Four, she thinks, and swallows a lump in her throat.

“Who do you think it was?” Ash whispers. She gives a shrug.

“I don't know. Let's not stop.”

***

It starts raining again shortly before sunset and this time they have nowhere to shelter. They end up stopping under a sort of natural canopy of tree branches, but by then they're both dripping wet and the branches only do so much. Misty tries to weave them tighter together, but after a few minutes her teeth are chattering and she can barely move her fingers from the cold and it doesn't look like there was much of an improvement, anyway, so she gives up.

She sits in the driest spot, next to Ash. The rain stats dwindling soon after, as if to mock her efforts, though they're both so drenched already it doesn't make much of a difference. Their jackets are somewhat waterproof, but they were under the downpour long enough that the rain soaked through the lining.

Misty removes hers and hangs it to some branches to dry. “Take yours off too, it'll be worse if you keep it on like that.”

“I'm freezing,” Ash protests. Misty sighs. She undoes her ponytail again and wrings her hair to squeeze out some of the water.

“You'll freeze for real if you don't take it off,” she retorts. “I'm serious. It'll freeze on you overnight.”

He listens to her, even if he doesn't look too convinced. He goes back to sitting and hugging his knees immediately after.

When the anthem starts playing he lies down on his side as if to sleep and doesn't look at the sky. Misty waits, looking up through the branches that keep dripping water. The first to appear, after the red R, is the girl from District J. Next are the tributes from U, of course, and Misty claws at her palms, fighting the impulse to look away. The last one is the girl from O.

“Who are the other two?” Ash asks without looking up, when the anthem fades.

“The girl from J and the one from O,” she answers. She tries to remember who the remaining two are. The boy from H, the one who had sworn to protect his companion. And the boy from S. He's the one who scares her the most. She thinks about his eleven, nearly the max score possible, and bites the inside of her cheek as she lies down next to Ash.

He's shivering in his wet shirt, curled up on himself. Misty hesitates a moment. Then lays one arm around him.

“Come here. We both risk freezing to death otherwise,” she whispers. Ash doesn't protest. She pulls him closer, trying to fit her body comfortably around his.

She hears him cough a few times throughout the night. “Are you okay?” she asks, when she thinks he's awake. She feels him nod.

“I'm just cold.”

Not entirely convinced she props herself up and touches his forehead. It doesn't seem hot, but it's hard to say, with her fingers still damp and half frozen numb. She lies back down and pulls him closer still, not knowing if she's holding him or holding onto him.

“It's a stupid idea,” Ash whispers after a while. “Maybe you should just leave me here and think about winning.”

“No,” she cuts him off. “I'm not doing that.”

“I thought you wanted to go home.”

“I still do.” She presses her lips together. “But I'm not leaving you here. Try to sleep.”

“I can't, I keep thinking,” he says. She doesn't need to ask about what.

She sighs a little and remains silent for a bit. “My mother used to tell me stories when I couldn't sleep,” she tells him then. “Sometimes I try to remember them, but I never can. She always made them up, they weren't from a book, so they were always different and I always tried to stay awake until the end, but I always fell asleep before she got there. I remember her voice. It reminded me of the waves.”

“What was her name?” Ash asks.

“Rose.” She lays her hand on his arm and traces it with her fingers slowly, careful when she meets the bandages. “We used to have a bush of wild roses growing near our house. It was small, one of my sisters and I found a sprout growing in the woods, next to the fence. We brought it to her as a surprise and she managed to make it take root. And want to know something weird? When she first got sick the roses started to wilt, even if my sisters kept watering them every day and caring for them when she couldn't. Two months after her death the whole plant died too.”

She pauses. “I spent a lot of time down by the beach back then. I liked to jump from the tallest rocks and then swim underwater until it felt like my chest was about to burst. I liked it because it felt like nothing could reach me down there, like the sea was a wall between me and all the bad things I didn't want to think about. It made me feel safe. A bit like my mother's voice when she told me stories.”

Ash's breathing is slow and steady now. “It was a bit like she was still with me,” Misty finishes in a whisper, then strokes his arm again and closes her eyes. She's exhausted enough to fall asleep quickly, and for a while she manages to sleep without dreaming.

When she wakes up the sky is the dirty grey that precedes dawn. Ash is still asleep. Misty untangles herself from him carefully, trying not to wake him up, and leans over to touch his forehead again. He doesn't have a fever. It's still cold, though, so she touches his jacket to check that it's dry and lays it on top of him like a blanket. She looks at him and thinks of doing as he said, of leaving now that he's still sleeping and won't see her, and trying to win the games. She thinks of him telling her that he wouldn't kill anyone, on the roof. Thinks of him shooting an arrow in the District U boy's back to save her life.

She stays.

He wakes up maybe an hour later. “Slept well?” she asks. He sits up and yawns.

“Sort of,” he says. Then adds: “Thanks.”

She smiles. “How's your arm?”

He tries moving it to check. “It's fine. Doesn't even hurt all that much.”

“Are you hungry?” she asks. “We still have some blueberries. We have a long way to go today, I think.”

***

They start walking early and the morning proceeds smoothly. They run into neither of the remaining tributes, and the sky remains mostly clear, though the air's a bit colder than usual. Around noon they stops and she tries to fish again, but this time after several attempts she only manages to catch one, which they split.

They go on in silence for a while. Misty tries to consider their chances: maybe they forcefield around the arena has some weak spot. Maybe it's really possible to break it somehow, or turn it off; there's got to be some power source somewhere. A moment would be enough. She has no idea what could even await them on the other side if somehow they managed to make it through, if more wilderness or the buildings of the Capitol. If it's the latter they'd probably be greeted by a whole army of Peacekeepers.

 _That'll probably happen either way_ , she tells herself. Everyone is going to see them. Even if the audience doesn't, the President will and he'll know what they're doing. Maybe they'll be executed on the spot, without appeal, and the audience will be told they fell in a crevice or were eaten by some wild animal. Maybe she really should have left. It's a stupid idea, and it's even more stupid to think there's even the slightest chance for it to work.

“Hey— wanna know something?” Ash asks after a while. She turns.

“What?”

He rubs the back of his head, a bit awkwardly. His face looks strained around the edges, like he's trying very hard not to think about what happened yesterday, but he still manages a hint of a smile. “I was thinking about what you said at the interview. You know, when you talked about the sea?”

Her mind is still halfway caught in her thoughts and it takes her a moment to remember what he's referring to. When she does she gives a slight shrug: “It was just some nonsense. I was trying to make the audience like me.”

Ash pushes a branch out of the way, narrowly avoiding having it immediately bounce back into his face. “Well I'm sure they still like you then, because I think it was true. What you said about yourself, I mean.”

“You think?” she asks. Ash nods.

“That's how you acted with me, at least.”

He states it bluntly and unassumingly, with another smile, and for some reason Misty's cheeks feel a bit warm. She decides to respond with teasing: “Well, you should be careful then, the sea is unpredictable. I could always change my mind and drown you.”

“I'm sure you could, you're a bit scary sometimes,” he laughs. She smiles to herself.

“For now you can rest easy,” she assures him. He laughs a bit again and says nothing, and she loses herself back into her thoughts after a minute, looking back ahead.

“How big do you think it is?” Ash asks eventually. “The arena, I mean.”

Misty shrugs again. “I have no idea. We'll find out.”

He rips a handful of blueberries from a bush and stuffs them into his mouth. “It can't go on that much longer, can it? We've been walking for two days.”

She answers with a “mmh”, thoughtful still. She's wondering for how much longer it will look like they're just innocently walking around the stream. Maybe they're deluding themselves and their intentions are already obvious to everyone.

She's still thinking about it when suddenly there's a faint groan and then a thud. When she turns Ash is lying face down on the ground.

For a second Misty stands frozen in place, certain that someone must have hit him with something and that if she doesn't abandon him she will be next; then drops to her knees next to him, sinking her head between her shoulders to try and shield herself from a potential attack, and tries to shake him awake, whispering his name. When he doesn't react she rolls him onto his back and checks his stomach, waist, chest, looking for the wound. There's no blood anywhere.

“Ash,” she calls him. She shakes him harder. “Ash! What's wrong? Wake up!”

Nothing. His face his gray and his eyes are half closed, rolled to the whites. She has to lean even further to hear him breathe. She shakes him again and still she can't see any wounds, can't see any blood, can't see anything that might have done this to him. She runs her eyes over his unmoving shape and only then she sees the handful of berries scattered around his fingers.

They look like blueberries, but they're slightly bigger, slightly more elongated. When she crushes one in her hand it stains her skin green instead of blue.

She hooks one arm around Ash's back and heaves him to sitting, quick, praying it's not too late already. With her heart slamming against her ribs she forces his mouth open and pushes her fingers in his throat, as deep as they'll go.

Ash's body is shaken by a retching reflex, once, twice; then finally he gags and throws up a greenish goo on the grass. Misty keeps the arm around him and holds his forehead, grasping him tightly while his stomach struggles to rid itself of the poison.

She feels like she hasn't been breathing for several minutes. Ash heaves a few more times, with nothing left to expel but air. She holds him some moments longer. “It's okay,” she whispers when his body finally stops writhing, brushing his hair away from his forehead. Her voice shakes. “It's over. It's all over now.” She loosens the hold and lays him carefully back down on the ground. He groans faintly, his face glistening with sweat and still ashen.

Her hands are unsteady. She bats the remaining berries off his fingers, sending them rolling in the grass, then takes the backpack off and rummages for the water bottle. She realizes that her eyes are full of tears when her vision goes blurry and wipes angrily her arm over them, then wets the remaining bandages and lays them on Ash's forehead. He startles and shivers, opening his eyes a crack.

“You ate some poisonous berries,” Misty tells him. She sniffles. “You should have showed them to me. You should have asked!”

“I thought they were blueberries,” he manages to sputter.

“Well they weren't,” she retorts, harsher than she meant to be. She grabs the bottle again and hooks her arm back around him, pulling him back to sitting. “C'mon, drink.”

He swallows a couple sips before groaning and turning away, grabbing his stomach. Misty forces him to drink a little more, then puts down the bottle and bites her lip, thinking. It's obvious they can't go on with him in this state. She could carry him on her shoulders, she's sure she'd manage it, because while she held him she could tell that there's little more to him than bones and clothes; but she would have to leave the bow and the backpack behind.

She sighs, her hands still shaking slightly, then makes him lie down again and remains sat at his side. She takes the bow off her shoulders and nocks an arrow, ready to use it should she hear someone approach, and waits while he breathes faintly with his eyes closed and his face slowly regains a hint of color. The forest around them is silent. Misty remains alert, listening, glancing at him every now and them to make sure he's still breathing.

After a while Ash opens his eyes and looks at her. “You should have let me die,” he whispers.

“You didn't,” she retorts. She shakes her head. “I don't want you dead. I thought that much was clear.”

“You should win,” he insists. Misty doesn't answer and stands abruptly. She searches the grass for the berries she pushed out of his hand, finding a couple; then walks up to a bush and looks closely at the ones sprouting from its branches. They're smaller and round. She presses some between her fingers to be sure and the blueish juice stains her fingertips. She rips a handful and walks back to Ash, who's managed to sit up and is holding a hand to his stomach.

“These are blueberries,” she says, showing him the ones she just picked. “These aren't. I don't know what they are, but they're bigger and less round and their juice is green instead of blue.”

She crushes them on her palm to show him, then tosses them away and cleans her hand thoroughly on the grass. She keeps the blueberries. “These are edible.”

Ash grimaces. “I think I've had it with berries for the rest of my life, thanks,” he says, stretching his lips into a pained hint of a smile, then turns serious. “You didn't answer me.”

“You didn't ask me anything.”

He looks at her. “Why didn't you let me die?” he wants to know. Misty drops the blueberries and looks away.

“I don't want you to die,” she says. The grass blurs and she wipes her arm over her eyes again, irritated. “I wish I did, you know? It would be a lot easier! But I don't. I don't care if we're doing something stupid, okay? I want to try anyway.”

Ash says nothing. His face's gained back some color. Misty wipes her tears one more time and sniffles.

“Are you feeling better? If you are we're going on.”

“Yeah, I think,” he says, not sounding especially convincing. He tries to props himself to standing but nearly drops to the ground again, clasping his midsection with a grunt. Misty hurries to grab him.

“Okay, no. You need to rest a bit more.”

“I can do it,” he insists, though it's clear he can't. Misty is about to retort when there's a cannon shot.

She swallows. She looks up and sees the hovercraft descend, what can't be farther than a few hundreds yards from them. As soon as it takes flight again Ash tries to stand back up.

“You need to rest,” she insists. Ash looks at her.

“It was close,” he retorts. “If we don't move whoever's left is gonna find us and kill us too.”

He's not wrong. Misty digs her teeth into her lip, considering their odds, then quickly fills the bottle in the stream and places the bow back on her shoulders. She ducks under Ash's arm and helps him stand. He seems to manage to remain upright, leaning onto her, so she starts walking.

There's only three of them left now. She won't know who the latest victim was until this evening, provided they'll be still alive by then, but she's sure it was the boy from District H. It can't be otherwise. It can't be the one from S, with his eleven and the cold indifference he showed during the interview.

Three. They need to get away fast; a single misstep and the next will be one of them.

***

They keep walking through the afternoon, stopping to rest only for a few minutes at a time. It's almost evening when Misty makes way through a row of shrubs, and her stomach drops at the sight that opens in front of her. “Ash,” she whispers. She bites the inside of her cheek so hard it hurts. “I think we're at the end of the line.”

Some ten feet ahead, after a stretch of rocks and weeds, the ground drops suddenly to a sheer cliff. She walks closer to look down, shuddering when she accidentally kicks a pebble over the edge. It looks maybe a hundred feet tall, give or take. The rock wall is unnaturally smooth and almost perfectly vertical; the stream drops into a steep waterfall. It's hard to see the bottom clearly, with the sun close to setting, but she still makes out sharp rock edges.

She sits down on the ground, tired and defeated. “It's pointless,” she says, taking her head in her hands. “We can't go anywhere else.”

All her thinking about how to make it through the forcefield was for naught. This is the arena's border, this insurmountable cliff. Despite the darkness she clearly sees it stretch on both sides as far as the eye goes, trapping them on top of what looks to be some sort of elevated island. Impossible to enter or exit without being on board a hovercraft.

Ash sits next to her. “Maybe we could try to climb down,” she suggests, uncertain. Misty turns to look at him.

“Have you looked down at all? There's nothing to hold onto. We don't have a rope. We'd just fall to our death.”

She feels as thought what little hope she'd dared to put into his idea evaporated suddenly. There's no running away from the arena. There's a reason nobody ever did.

Ash is silent for a bit. “We can still split up,” he whispers in the end, looking ahead. Far away in the distance she makes out the Capitol's lights. “There's still some time. We're not alone yet.”

“No,” she retorts. Ash doesn't look at her.

“I'll go look for whoever is left,” he insists. “I'll try to hurt him as much as I can, before he kills me, so... it'll be easier for you to— ”

Misty gives his hand a squeeze to stop him. “No,” she says again. “I don't want you to get yourself killed for me. Stop thinking about it.”

“Then what do we do?” he wants to know. She stalls.

“I don't know,” she admits. She keeps her hand around his.

For a while neither speaks. In the end Misty lets out a sigh. “Well, better look for somewhere to spend the night. It's starting to get cold.”

He agrees with a grim “mmh”. She stands to look around.

“How are you feeling?” she asks. “Does your stomach still hurt?”

He shakes his head. “It's fine. I'm just a bit nauseous.”

“We have nothing to eat.”

“It's alright. I think I'd just throw up anyway.”

Misty crouches back down and takes the bottle from her backpack. “Drink some water at least, we walked a lot.”

He accepts it and swallows a few sips, not entirely managing to hold back a grimace. He wipes a hand over his mouth and hands it back to her. She drinks some too, trying to calm the hunger she's started feeling several hours ago already, then stands.

“Let's go.”

Ash nods and stands as well, slowly. She isn't at all convinced that he's not still in pain. For a moment she's tempted to steady him by his elbow, then stops. She feels too exhausted and empty.

She makes way through the shrubs again. It's almost completely dark now, and she doesn't see the silhouette among the trees right away; maybe she even glances past it without noticing. When her eyes finally focus on it she freezes, her breath caught abruptly in her chest.

The boy from District S is standing in front of them. He's perfectly still, his hand on the haft of a spear. She can't see his eyes, but she still feels his cold, imperturbable glance on herself and for a moment she can't move, her feet are glued to the ground and her arms won't reach for the bow. And it's a moment too long, because then the boy raises his arm and tosses the spear at them.

Only at the very last second does she manage to react. She throws herself at Ash and pushes him down among the bushes, holding her breath while the spear flies above them so close she feels the wind on her neck.

“Stay here!” she whispers, only allowing herself a moment to check that he's not hurt. She can't see where the spear went, it's too dark. She takes the bow off her shoulders and tries to nock an arrow. Her hands are shaking and she struggles; the string keeps slipping from her fingers and the more she stumbles the more fear and desperation make her movements hastier.

The boy from District S approaches them like he's not scared of either her or her arrows. He retrieves the spear and stands just as she manage to finally hook her fingers on the string the right way and aim the bow, and for a couple seconds they face each other, Misty with her arrow drawn and the boy with the spear raised in his fist. Then he leaps towards her and bowls her over, so quick she has no time to react, and lowers the spear to impale her.

Misty manages to roll aside and avoid the jab by a hair, but the spearhead pierces through her jacket and she's stuck, pinned to the ground among the dead leaves. The boy pulls a knife from his belt. He doesn't even blink as he lifts it to plunge it into her stomach. She manages to raise her legs and land a kick to his abdomen, then quickly unzips her jacket and rolls out of it. The cold night air bites her arms while she starts running.

She stops soon after, realizing that he's not following her. She turns back around and sees him head towards where she left Ash, the spear back in his hand.

“Hey!” she yells. She left bow and quiver on the ground with her jacket, so she picks a rock from the ground and throws it at him, managing to hit him in the shoulder. “Come and get me! I'm right here!”

She only distracts him for a moment, but it's enough for Ash to stand and dart in the opposite direction. The boy bares his teeth in anger and pounces towards her again. He throws the spear as he leaps and this time Misty feels a burning pain shoot through her side as the weapon flies past her. She doesn't stop to check the wound, she presses her hand against it and keeps running, limping, trying to resist the stabbing pangs that now follow her every movement. The pain slows her down, and moments later the boy's hand grasps her by the hair and pulls her backwards, violently enough that she loses her balance and topples onto her back.

The impact takes her breath away and he's on her in a blink. He holds her to the ground sitting on top of her legs and Misty sees the blood that's spilling from her side, soaking her shirt. She tries to shake him off, but he's bigger and heavier than her and the wound hurts, white flashes exploding in front of her eyes with every effort. She tries to claw at his face and he manages to grab both of her wrists in one hand, pinning them above her head. He's too strong. She tries again to wiggle free and when she can't she spits in his face.

He hardly blinks. She wipes her spit from his forehead with his free hand, then takes the knife from his belt again and runs the tip down her stomach, like he's deciding where to stab her. He stops it at her middle and the knife's end pushes harder, piercing her shirt and pressing against her flesh.

 _Just do it,_ she begs silently, her heart so loud she hears nothing else. _Just do it, please, at least be quick._ Then somewhere Ash yells “let her go!” and both she and the boy turn for a second. The pressure of the knife against her belly doesn't lift.

“Go away, you idiot, run!” she screams. Ash doesn't move. He's standing a few feet from them, unarmed.

“Let her go!” he says again, and when the boy ignores him and takes his attention back to her he leaps forwards and tosses himself at him, grabbing him by the waist to get him off her. They roll among the bushes in a tangle of arms and legs. Misty tries to gather herself up, holding her side that hasn't stopped bleeding. The pain blinds her for a second and she's almost sure she'll pass out. She doesn't, though, and she manages to prop herself up and stand.

She gropes for the spear among the bushes. The boy has pinned Ash to the ground, his knees locked around his waist and his hands around his throat. “You're pathetic,” he hisses, while Ash gasps trying to breathe, and they're the first words Misty's heard him say outside of the interview. She can't find the spear, but she sees the knife, among the leaves next to where he and Ash are. If she made a move for it he'd probably see her and stop her before she can do anything.

She's gathering the courage to try anyway when the anthem starts playing. The boy is distracted for a second, barely a blink, and Misty thinks _now_ and as fast as she can she leaps for the knife and closes her hand on the grip, trying not to succumb to the lacerating pain that shoots through her body. She plunges it in his back before he's got the time to react.

His grasp loosens and Ash coughs, gasping. Misty manages to take a step back, then the pain gets the best of her and she crumples to the ground in a miserable heap. She brings a hand to her side and feels her shirt drenched in blood under her palm. The edges of her vision go dark.

The boy from District S doesn't die immediately. He manages to stand with the knife sticking out of his back, while the last few notes of the anthem play, and for a second Misty thinks confusedly that maybe she didn't really hit him, maybe she just imagined it. Then his body is rattled by a tremble, and the boy — Paul, she thinks she suddenly remembers his name being — hits the ground first with his knees and next with his face.

“Misty!” Ash cries out, rushing to her. He rolls her onto her back gently, trying not to hurt her, but she can't help but yelp in pain anyway. “You're hurt,” he realizes, horrified. His hands hovers mid-air over her wound. He hesitates, then grasps the hem of her shirt to lift it.

“I don't want to see,” she groans, closing her eyes. She tastes blood when she swallows, yet she's sure there isn't any on her face or around her lips. She has to grit her teeth not to scream when Ash peels her shirt away because the soaked fabric's stuck to the gash in her skin.

His silence confirms what she already knows. It's bad, almost certainly too bad for him to do anything. He lets go of her shirt and begins to stand.

“Where's your backpack? We need to bandage it. We— ”

Misty stops him, grabbing him by his arm. “It won't do anything,” she whispers. She feels the tang of blood in her mouth again, stronger now.

“No,” he says, shaking his head. She sees that his eyes are full of tears. She's cold, she's shaking uncontrollably. She loosens her fingers, stroking his arm.

“Looks like you're gonna win, after all,” she tells him, forcing her lips into a smile. Her vision blurs again and she's not sure if it's tears or if it's because she's about to lose consciousness for real.

“No,” he insists. “It can't be that bad. We, we just need to stop the bleeding, I'm sure, you'll be okay. You have to.”

He has to know it's not true, he can't possibly not know it. Misty strokes the back of his hand and then closes hers around it.

“I'm dying, Ash,” she whispers. “It got something, some organ. There's nothing you can do.” She presses her lips together to push back a sob and holds onto the smile. “You won. You're going home.”

“No!” he repeats a third time. He grasps her hand tightly, as if he could hold her there. “Don't die. Please. You have to win. You— ”

He stops suddenly. He lowers his head for a second, his brow creasing into a frown, then looks back to her. “They can fix you at the Capitol,” he says. “I'm sure they can cure it there.”

“I won't go back to the Capitol,” she retorts, confused. “You will.”

Ash doesn't reply. He takes his jacket off and wraps it around her. He brushes her hair away from her face and smiles, his tears about to spill. “You'll be fine,” he promises. “You just need to hold on a little while. They'll take care of you soon.”

He leans over for a second, hesitates and then lays a small kiss on her hair, and suddenly she understands.

“No!” she tries to stop him. She attempts to grab him and he stands quickly, getting out of her reach before she manages to. “You can't! Stop!”

Ash smiles at her one last time. “You'll be fine,” he says again. Then turns, and as she tries fruitlessly to stand starts running towards the edge of the cliff.

“No!” she screams, and he doesn't stop. “Ash! _No!_ ”

It's too late. Ash reaches the edge and doesn't slow down. He leaps over it and then there's silence, and moments later there's the thud of his body against the bottom, the crack of broken bones. Without so much as a scream. Misty presses her hands to her mouth in the horrible silence and a sob rips through her, tearing her apart.

She can't stop. The sobs choke her and blood fills her mouth, and then two cannon shots go off one after the other and the speaker's voice suddenly pours into the arena, echoing though her chest and her head while she collapses back on the grass:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I'm proud to present the winner of the 71st  Hunger Games! Misty Waterflower, from District K!”

She barely hears the hovercraft descending to pick her up. She feels almost nothing. She closes her eyes and thinks she can feel cold, metallic hands grabbing her and placing her on something, maybe a gurney, letting Ash's jacket fall off her body. But it doesn't matter. Nothing really does anymore. She's just glad to lose consciousness at last.


	5. V

She wakes up in a bed in what looks like a hospital room. The ceiling is white and empty and Misty stares at it, without trying to sit up or check what happened to her wound. It doesn't feel important enough. There's a needle in her arm and after a while she finds herself looking at the drops of liquid falling down the IV tube, one after the other, one after the other, one after the other.

She refuses the food she's offered. “I don't want it,” she whispers, when another pink-haired nurse pushes a tray in front of her. She turns towards the wall when the woman insists that she need to eat to gain her strength back.

For once she's fine with not feeling strong. She keeps drifting into sleep, and sleeping seems better than being awake. _You won,_ she tries telling herself, _you're going home._ At one point she says it out loud, her voice weak and raspy in the empty room. It doesn't feel like it means anything. Sleeping is better, even with the horrible nightmares she keeps having.

She keeps refusing her meals, but accepts to swallow a pill when the nurse tells her it'll relax her nerves and make her sleep without dreams. The drug keeps its promise and for nearly twelve hours she sleeps without seeing images of the past few days, of the games or of Ash. When she wakes up she curls up on her side, pulling the sheet above her head.

She has no idea how long she's been here. Eventually the door opens again and she stats burying herself back under the sheet, expecting the nurse. Then she sees the lilac bun.

“Lila,” she whispers. Her throat burns as if she's been crying, though she's sure she hasn't. The woman closes the door behind herself.

“I shouldn't be allowed in here, I convinced them to turn a blind eye,” she says. She walks closer and sits on the edge of her bed, and Misty gathers herself to sitting for the first time since she regained consciousness. Her side hurts a little, but not as much as she'd have expected.

“Where am I?” she asks.

“The hospital of the Training Center.”

“For how long?”

“About a week. You were unconscious for a few days.”

Misty bites her lip. It's dry and chapped. “Ash...” she whispers, and then stops, because she doesn't know what she wanted to ask. If he's really dead? She knows he is, she heard his body hit the bottom of the cliff. She keeps hearing that noise in her dreams. If someone's at least bothered to retrieve what's left of him? She hopes so, that his body at least made it back home. Thinking about him abandoned down there forever is too unbearable.

“I'm sorry,” Lila whispers, and Misty realizes that tears are swelling in her eyes at last. The woman strokes her hair and then folds her into a hug and for a moment Misty thinks of pushing her away, but then the dam breaks and she sobs into her chest.

“It's not fair,” she wails, muffled by the fabric of Lila's shirt. “He should have won. How could he be so _stupid_! He should have let me die!”

Lila holds her until she manages to calm down, even if it feels like hours. She keeps stroking her hair, which someone washed while she was passed out, and finds a box of tissues in a drawer that she manages to use almost all the way; and waits patiently for her sobs to subside and let her breathe again.

“He's not still down there, is he?” Misty manages to ask after who knows how long, her voice so unsteady she's not sure Lila can even understand her. “Did someone get him? Did they take him home?”

Lila nods. “His body was returned to District K. You don't need to worry about this.”

Misty starts crying again. The woman waits still.

“Listen,” she tells her in the end. “I know it's probably the last thing you want to hear, but we need to talk about a few things.”

“What?” Misty wants to know. Lila sighs.

“The day after tomorrow your coronation as the Victor will take place, and then the interview,” she says. Misty's eyes widen and she shakes her head.

“No,” she tries to refuse. The Victor's coronation is is preceded by a three-hour show during which a recap of the games is broadcast, and the winner has to sit on the stage the whole time while a maxi screen shows the highlights. It means having to see some of what happened all over again. And him, too. “I don't want to. I can't.”

Lila brushes a strand of hair away from her forehead. “I did all I could to try and convince them to postpone it or omit your presence. I told them you suffered an almost fatal would, told them that you're still in shock. Unfortunately they're not willing to budge. The ceremony must happen and the winner must be on stage.”

Misty presses her lips together, feeling tears push at the back of her eyes again. She closes her hands around the sheet.

“Then— I'll say something they'll remember,” she whispers, after a few moments. “If they want me to speak they'll have to listen to everything I have to say. I want to make them regret it.”

“You'll get in trouble,” Lila warns her, frowning. Misty shrugs.

“I don't care. I don't even care about going home anymore.”

It's not quite true: she thinks of her sisters waiting for her and her chest aches. But then she thinks of Ash's mother, alone now, without a husband or a son anymore. Waiting forever. And like her so many others.

She looks up. “Lila, do you think you can make me look threatening? At the ceremony, I mean. With the makeup and the dress. I want them to get my message.”

Lila purses her painted lips for a second. “I'll do my best,” she promises then with a small sigh. “Now rest. Think about this very wisely. And try to eat something, you'll need some energy to get on stage.”

Misty nods. She watches the woman walk out and lies back down. She needs to think about what she's going to say; she needs it to leave a mark, to be something they won't forget easily.

She eats her dinner even if she can barely taste anything and it makes her nauseous. She doesn't think her legs would hold her right now if she tried to stand, but on the stage she'll have to look strong. She'll have to be like the sea again. In a storm, this time, when the sky is dark and the waves so tall that even the most seasoned fishermen don't dare to go near the shore.

***

Lila lines her eyes with sharp dark wings. She powders her cheeks in a way that makes her cheekbones sharper without making her look frail despite the weight she lost, and blends a deep dark blue on her eyelids, with a quiet shine under the surface. Misty watches herself in the mirror while the woman redraws her features and makes them unknown, makes them captivating and somber. She tries to find the strength she felt the first time she sat on the stage, before the games started, but she can't find any. Behind all that makeup there's nothing.

The stylist tries a couple different hairdos on her before settling on an intricate braid behind her head, weaving thin silver threads between each strand. They're almost invisible if she stands still, but as soon as she moves her head her hair shines catching the light. The prep team did something to it while they washed it and now the red looks somewhat deeper and brighter, though she can't put a finger on how.

“Do you like it?” Lila asks, placing her hands on her shoulders. Misty nods.

“It looks good.”

“I'll go get your dress,” the woman says. Misty keeps looking in the mirror and tries to find herself in her reflection, the girl who for a short while really felt as strong as the sea, the girl who fought and killed in the arena but also protected and kept warm, who lowered her bow and said _I won't shoot_ when Ash found her. If she's there she still can't see her.

Lila comes back pushing a mannequin. “Close your eyes,” she says, and Misty feels the fabric of the dress slip over her body. “Can I look now?” she asks, after a bit. Lila tells her yes.

The dress is the same deep blue as her eyeshadow. The skirt wraps around the upper half of her tights and then opens into ruffled layers, iridescent like the other dresses, but this time going from the dark green of a stormy sea to the deepest black, changing with her every movement. Impalpable lighter touches at the edges give the illusion of seafoam rising in sprays as the fabric ripples. The bodice is simple, without frills, leaving her back and her arms uncovered. Lila makes her wear long velvet gloves and then the shoes, a pair of sandals with leather straps lacing around her ankles like the ribbons of a ballet shoe.

“What do you think?” she asks, taking half a step back.

Misty looks at her reflection. Draped in all that shimmering dark fabric she looks threatening; she looks deadly. Lila understood exactly what she wanted. The image in the mirror makes her think of the sea's surface swelling before a tidal wave, of a creature crawled out from the deeps.

“It's perfect,” she says. She remembers Ash sitting on the stairs, smiling nervously and saying _you were a bit scary at the interview_ , and she feels her eyes burn.

“You can cry if you want,” Lila tells her. “The makeup is waterproof. It won't wash off.”

“I don't want to cry,” Misty retorts. She doesn't want to walk on stage with her eyes red and puffy. “I want to look strong.”

Lila lays her hand on her shoulder. “You are,” she reassures her. Misty doesn't feel strong at all. Behind all that fabric and all that makeup there's still only the empty shell that woke up in her hospital bed. She thinks of how she felt like she left something behind in the town square when Jessebelle pulled her name from the bowl, something like a million years before, and she wonders if the same thing happened now. Her strength was left behind in the arena, slipped out of her the moment Ash leaped past the cliff's edge.

Lila's hand stays. “Don't feel like you have to do something just because of the dress. You can still answer their questions and say what they want to hear, it's not too late.”

“I don't want to. I want them to remember me,” Misty insist. She swallows and pushes her tears back. “I think I owe it to Ash. After what he did— I want them to remember him, too.”

The woman sighs slightly, but doesn't try to change her mind. “Good luck,” she whispers, like she did in the stockyard, and Misty feels her stomach squeeze shut.

***

Stood on the metal platform under the stage her legs feel unsteady. She feels weak, she feels pathetic; a kid with makeup plastered all over her face. She couldn't scare anyone, at best she could make them laugh. She squeezes her hands into fists in the velvet gloves and for a moment considers letting it all go, smiling for the cameras and answering Gabby's question, and accepting the Victor's crown with a curtsy like she learned from Jessebelle. But Ash jumped from the cliff for her. He died because he couldn't stand to win, if winning meant watching her die and doing nothing, and she cannot let them forget this.

The anthem starts playing and Misty swallows, fighting the impulse to keep clenching her fists. _Chin up,_ she reminds herself, while the platform vibrates under her feet and starts rising. She doesn't smile, though it's what's usually expected of a winner. She tries to remain unblinking as the stage lights blind her.

“Let's hear it for our winner, Misty Waterflower from District K!” Gabby welcomes her, and a roar of applause rises from the audience. Misty feels a wave of nausea rise and tries not to let it show.

Surge, Jessebelle, Lila and her prep team are all sat at the side of the stage. The preppers clap and cheer and Surge gives her the thumbs up, but it's Lila's calm and almost complicit smile that manages to make her feel a little better.

Gabby takes her hand as if to lead her to a ballroom dance and guides her to her chair, a sort of throne at the center of the stage. Her face is on every maxi screen around the square. Gabby talks enthusiastically into her microphone and Misty can only think about how on that same stage she interviewed Ash and all the others just a few days ago. Surely she watched them all die, as did everyone else, yet she's all excited smiles.

“Don't you want to smile for the audience, dear?” she exhorts. Misty shakes her head. “No? Well, it's understandable thar a Victor might want to keep their composure, after all! Let's cut the chatter, then— it's showtime, citizens of the Capitol!”

The lights dim and the R appears on the screens. The biggest one is right in front of her, she can't avoid looking at it unless she lowers her head and she doesn't want to. She grasps the armrests of her chair, thankful from the gloves preventing her from leaving sweaty marks on the red leather, and grits her teeth through it.

The first half an hour goes over the events that preceded the start of the game. It begins with a quick recap of the reapings and Misty's breath hitches for a second when Ash climbs on the stage. Standing next to her he looks too young again: he doesn't look fourteen, he hardly even looks old enough for his name to be in the bowl. Neither of them do. For a moment she finds herself hoping that someone will volunteer in their place. It doesn't happen, of course, and she feels tears swell in her eyes again. She hopes no one will notice.

Next are the chariot rides and their scores, and then their interviews. She can't recognize herself in the girl who looks determined at the audience, in a dress that looks weaved from the sea's surface. Maybe that girl didn't survive either; maybe she died in the arena with all the others.

The next two hours and half focus on the arena. The bloodbath at the cornucopia opens it, naturally, and Misty starts to feel sick. The boy from District J is the first to die, impaled by the spear the boy from S grabbed hold of, then the girl from F. The cameras follow her scuffle for the backpack with the District U girl and then move onto the other deaths, the boys from F and O and the girl from A. Ash is shown for a second, darting away among the trees.

Keeping her eyes on the screen is torture. _Chin up_ , she keeps telling herself, even if all she wants is to curl up on herself and hide her face against her knees. She sees herself with the girl from Distric S and the arrow, and she doesn't look any different than the rest of them. _Chin up. Make them think you're strong._

The girl from District H is struck by a knife as her companion leaves her alone to go look for food, after promising her that she'd be safe. Then it's the turn of the boy from A, dead after stuffing some berries into his mouth. Ash runs from the boy from U until he falls to his knees exhausted, and tries to fall asleep, shivering, after unsuccessfully trying to start a fire. He finds a bush of red berries that she doesn't recognize, and eventually gives in to the hunger only to get violently sick immediately after. The audience grumbles in disgust and the cameras cut to her finding the stream.

From there it keeps getting worse, because once she meets Ash a lot of the focus is on them. When they spend the night together in the cave and he lies down next to her she wants to cry. Seeing the other deaths is almost less terrible.

As the broadcast gets closer to the end she feels sick to the point of shaking. The last fight, between them and the boy from S, is shown in every detail. The cameras zoom in on her wound when Ash lifts her shirt and she sees for the first time how deep the spear really had cut into her flesh. She thinks of the thin scar she saw on her side while the prep team busied themselves around her and can't reconcile it with the gash she sees in front of her.

Ash takes off his jacket to wrap it around her. He kisses her hair and she has to bite the inside of her cheek not to scream, not to beg his image on the screen to stop as if he could hear her. She holds her breath while he runs towards the edge of the cliff and doesn't stop.

The cameras follow his jump in slow motion. They cut to her screaming, then to his body on the ground. Misty can't believe it. Somehow she thought they'd at least have the decency not to do that, not to show his mangled body in a growing puddle of blood. It's like a lash to the face, an electric shock through her nerves, and while the speaker's voice announces her victory again she's filled with rage. And she knows that she has to do something.

They could hurt her, sure. They could hurt her sisters, or Lila. But if she bites her tongue and smiles and plays her part she'll have agreed to be their pawn. To be aware of the deaths, the hurt, the horror, and look the other way. So she has to do it, even if she's scared, even if she feels weak. Ash was scared to die and he didn't stop.

The R appears on the screens again and the lights turn back on. Misty stands as the anthem plays. The President walks on stage in his usual orange suit, followed by a blonde girl holding the Victor's crown on a pillow. Misty forces herself to remain impassive while the President lays it on her head.

There's another round of applause. She swallows, waiting for it to be over.

When there's silence again she clears her throat. “I— I'd like to speak,” she says, faltering only a little. “I have some things I'd like to say.”

The President looks surprised. It's certainly unusual for a tribute to take initiatives that deviate from the program. Gabby intervenes quickly.

“It's not the time for your interview yet,” she reminds her. Misty shrugs.

“It doesn't matter,” she retorts. She breathes in, looking straight ahead. “I'd like to speak anyway.”

Some murmurs rise from the audience. She clearly picked their curiosity, and it may be in the show's best interest now to let her continue and not let them down. She quickly glances to the side of the stage: Surge looks worried and Jessebelle stares at her in shock, but Lila nod almost imperceptibly. _Go ahead. If you want to speak, do it now._

Misty takes a couple steps forward. She breathes in again.

“I won the Hunger Games,” she says. Her voice shakes a little and she tries her best to still it. “But it wasn't because I'm good, or because I'm strong, or because I'm smart. You've all seen it. It was because someone else gave his life for me.”

The audience is quiet. Misty closes her eyes for a moment.

“Ash was fourteen, like me,” she goes on. “He wasn't too good with weapons. Maybe he wouldn't have survived as long as he did in the arena if he'd been alone. He told me he wasn't going to kill anyone, and he wouldn't have done it if not to save my life. And yet he deserved to win a lot more than I did. He deserved to be here, and to be alive, and to go home, because despite all of that he was better than me. And of anyone, because I bet few here would be willing to die for someone they barely know. Actually scratch that, I don't think a single person in this audience would.”

Her voice cracks and she has to swallow a lump in her throat to go on. “But Ash did it. He could have let me die, I don't think it would have taken long. That's all he had to do, wait a few minutes. Then he could have gone home. And I think— I think it's what _I_ would have done, had I been in his place. And yet he killed himself so I would live, even if he barely knew me, even if we had basically never seen each other before we got on that stage. And that's why he should be here, because someone who's willing to die for someone he doesn't even know didn't deserve that, because I know— I know he was scared to die, and yet he proved to be braver than anyone else in the arena. He was better than me and he was better than all of you and you don't even have the decency not to show his dead body on live television while his mother watches. How do you look at yourselves in the mirror?!”

“Enough, this is unacceptable,” comes the President's voice behind her. As if obeying to an implicit order two Peacekeepers rush on stage, and to her surprise Surge stands and steps in front of them, to keep them from reaching her.

“She's just talking. Let her finish.”

Misty balls her fists. She sees herself on the screens, trembling with anger in the look Lila created for her. Her eyes glisten slightly with tears. “And once this edition of the Hunger Games is over you'll forget about it like all the others. His death will be one of hundreds, thousands. It means nothing to you. None of these deaths do. How are you all not ashamed?”

She breathes, while behind her there is the noise of a scuffle, then looks straight into the camera as she says the last few words. “It means nothing to you because you think you're safe. But the sea is unpredictable. Remember this.”

There's silence in the audience for a moment still, while all the maxi screens show her face. Then someone grabs her and pulls her away, dragging her away from the center of the stage. It's one of the Peacekeepers. Misty lets him, without giving him the satisfaction to see her scream or struggle. “What, you let a kid scare you?” she hears Surge's voice. He's not the only one yelling, there are other voices rising and some disorder is starting in the audience. “She just proved to be braver than anyone here!”

Seeing herself on the screens as she's dragged away is a strange feeling, like it's not really happening to her. The Peacekeeper keeps holding her by her arm behind the stage, but he looks somewhat uneasy. Misty looks straight at him and yanks her arm from his grasp.

Lila manages to reach her after a moment. She closes her hands on her shoulders, her breath short. “You're in trouble, probably.”

“It doesn't matter,” she retorts. She's shaking, but she tries not to let that matter either. “I said what I wanted to say.”

Lila hugs her quickly. “They won't forget, I think,” she promises.

Misty nods. They'll have to remember. They'll have to. And if they'll want to forget they'll have to feel at least a hint of shame.

She hopes it with all of herself.

She will regret this, she's sure. And yet she realizes that somehow right now she doesn't really feel scared: the emptiness she felt was filled with rage and she feels it encase her like a shield. What could they do, after all, kill her? She already died in the arena. The girl she was before the Hunger Games began died with the others, and she's only her ghost.

She breathes slowly and holds her chin up, surrounded by a circle of Peacekeepers. _The sea is unpredictable_ , she repeats to herself, forcing herself to keep looking straight ahead and not waver. _It can drag you to the bottom and swallow you forever._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A couple extra notes:  
> \- I tagged both m/f and gen because while I did write this fic about my ship, my intention was less "romance" and more "kids bond through severe trauma, with maybe a side of being slightly smitten with each other", so neither tag felt entirely fitting on its own. (Likewise, what Misty does at the end endangering herself and those around her isn't solely _for_ Ash, but also a refusal to continue to be complicit in the horror perpetrated by the Capitol, with his sacrifice as the catalyst.)  
> \- I never wrote nor really intended to write a sequel, but in my head Misty's act of defiance becomes a spark that will eventually lead to change. Whether she lives to see it or is killed immediately after... well, I like to think that the Capitol would consider it bad PR to kill a Victor right after their coronation, but I leave it up to you.
> 
> Well. If you're here, thanks for reading this old mess!


End file.
